Wv^--^^ 










m 






I 



hW 






', ;■> 













V,.- 



^^■:;^v.: 






-i^r-vv 



..,/ 



WINDFALLS. 






BY THE AUTHOR oF 



««ASPECTS OF HUMANITY." 



lT(?^VV«LcrO[vWN |Vv-<J^WVVtA/ 



Forma mentis fugax. 




PHILADELPHIA 
PRIVATE EDITION 

i87o- 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, in the Clerk's Office of the District 
Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



WINDFALLS. 



"CHARITY NEVER FAILETH." 

Man's wisdom takes its rise in fear; 

And " fear hath torment," though in hearts sincere. 

God's wisdom flows in perfect love, 

And lifts the fallen soul all fear above. 

Be ours to search that flood of strength, 
To trace its rise and prosecute its length, 
And view its breadth, as finite man 
Such boundless bliss may incompletely scan. 

See first a righteous fear induce 

Faith in a guidance from which sin broke loose,— 

Enlightened faith, as taught by grief 

Unknown before its act of unbelief. 

From faith so warned to keep its course, 
And persevering, grows a nobler force, — 
A faith renewed, with larger scope, 
In which fear falls, and is replaced by hope. 

So stayed by hope and turned toward things 

Not seen, for else hope were not hope, faith brings 

The faithful soul into such state. 

That all its works on love and knowledge wait. 

Then faith and hope, not slain like fear. 
Are lost, in that they can no more appear. 
Through doubt and shame their fires endure; 
Love is not love, except its flame be pure. 

So man, in vision clear, discerns 
How all God's universe uninjured burns. 
As burned the bush which Moses saw. 
And yields his heart to love's eternal law. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

A SALUTATION 7 

MATHEMATICS TYPICAL OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE 9 

NUMBER AS AN OBJECT 30 

CURRENT ARITHMETIC 34 

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE 35 

THE LAW OF THE ROAD 41 

ATONEMENT 46 

THE LAND OF PROMISE , 47 

THE PLACE OF FICTION 52 

ROMANCE 56 

THE DRIFT OF SYNTAX 57 

PROPHECY AND INTERPRETATION 61 

UNIVERSAL SCRIPTURE 65 

THE MORTALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 66 

THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS 69 

VANITY OF VANITIES 73 

MERIT 74 

THE SUBORDINATION OF LAW 77 

AUTHORITY 79 

ABSTRACTIONS versus DELUSIONS 80 

HIDDEN LIFE 83 

A PARAPHRASE 86 

A POSSIBLE STEP FORWARD 87 

INCIDENTAL EDUCATION 91 

KNOWLEDGE 94 

THE EXPENDITURE OF EXPLANATION 95 

CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION 98 

AN ASPIRATION 108 



1* 



WINDFALLS. 



A SALUTATION. 

Greet ye one another with an holy kiss." — i Cor. xvi. 20, etc 

God speed thee, struggling neighbor ! 

All blessings on thy head ! 
May we be one in labor, 

Till to temptation dead ! 

So shall we stand united ; 

While parted, both might fall, 
Although of God invited, 

Who would be all in all. 



He is before all creatures ; 

In Him we all consist. 
And glorify his features, 

Or foul them, as we list. 

We tread the world of matter 
By means of outward sense, 

Whose visions often flatter, 
While veihng violence. 

But as we win the graces 
Which wait upon his will, 

We read in fellow-faces 
The signs of good and ill. 



A SALUTATION. 

And if we be connected 
On the internal ground, 

With joy are we affected 

When outward links are found. 



With honest purpose meeting, 
All doubting we dismiss ; 

Count every word a greeting, 
And every work a kiss. 



MATHEMATICS TYPICAL OF 
UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 



" Mathematics is only common elementary philosophy, and philosophy is 
only higher mathematics." — NovALis. 

[A Word of Caution.— Be entreated, gentle reader ! before devoting time 
and attention to an appreciation of the ensuing disquisition, to pause and 
reflect upon the difference between a true assurance and a false. The true ex- 
plorer and reporter of the realms of thought, relying wholly for fortune and 
favor on the consciousness that the Truth is inherently larger and clearer as 
well as fairer than any demonstration of it which he can hope to give, pre- 
tends not to foresee the suggestions which his report shall awaken in any 
minds. But while he is thus secured from the temptation to work for mere 
sensational effect, there must always be effects which he can imagine might 
be produced in any hearer or reader. He may be a true author, while a very 
partial seer. The mere literary pretender, however, goes a step farther in 
the blindness of his faith, assuming that he may be generally as well as par- 
ticularly unconscious of any virtue passing through him. As the author of 
Night Thoughts has freely delineated him in one of his epistles to the 
author of The Dunciad, 

" Perhaps a title has his fancy smit ; 
Or a quaint motto, which he thinks has wit. 
He writes, in inspiration puts his trust, 
Tho' wrong his thoughts, the gods will make them just. 
Genius directly from the gods descends. 
And who by labor would distrust his friends? 
Thus having reasoned with consummate skill, 
In immortality he dips his quill ; 
And, since blank paper is denied the press, 
He mingles the whole alphabet by guess, 
In various sets, which various words compose, 
Of which he hopes mankind the meaning knows." 

Prudent reader ! if thy time and attention shall here be devoted in vain, 
cast not all the blame on him who thus forewarns thee. If unaccustomed 

9 



lO MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

or averse to " thinking about thinking," examine first the next presented and 
shorter article or Number, which may possibly furnish a fit introduction to 
this, probably a more than sufficient substitute for it] 

TRUTH, in one of its aspects, may be defined to be the 
power of coalescence. The observation is doubtless as 
old as Humanity, with distinctness proportioned to the saga- 
city of the observer, and must ever continue 

The unity of truth. • i • • i • i i 

With increasnig clearness to stniiulate and to 
reward the zeal of Nature's hopeful explorers, that the bound- 
ary lines of her provinces, as they are fondly and unavoidably 
called, have in Nature no actual existence. The distinctions 
of diverse Science, originating exclusively although uncon- 
sciously in the realm of imagination, as ideas of more or less 
temporary value, are not natural, but artificial. In technical 
parlance, they exist, while they exist, not objectiveh^, or in 
fact, but subjectively only, or in our partial modes of percep- 
tion and of thought. They are all doomed more or less grad- 
ually to vanish, as the domain of intellect shall be extended. 
Whether we will receive it or whether we will forbear, there 
is a progressive revelation of Nature, in which coalition and 
co-operation everywdiere announce the omnipresent Deity. 
All things run together, although their wondrous fusion may 
be duly realized only in the full radiance of that celestial 
Light, whose straggling emanations even are wont to dazzle 
our mortal gaze into temporary blindness. 

This doctrine of a pervading unity in Na- 
EssentiaitointeiH- ^ jjj,^ ^ ^^^^^^ principle of truth, may 

gence and cert^uity. ' j r r t j 

be said to be an intuitive perception of the 
healthy human soul. Like others it may be overlain and 
concealed in the very abundance of fragmentary attainment, 
and so become temporarily an unavailable if not superfluous 
element of wisdom. Perhaps even more than others has 
this doctrine suffered this fate in latter ages. But such fate 
cannot be final. The lost link must from time to time re- 
appear in the inevitable successions of universal thought. 
The forgotten or neglected stone must still retain its place in 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 1 1 

the eternal arch of truth. How many a weary soul may be 
even now looking wistfully back from the distraction of the 
"much learning" under which the modern mind has been 
staggering onward, to those clear morning hours of philosophy, 
to the ages at once of poverty and of promise, when the 
pristine freshness of intellect had as yet in no wise yielded to 
a sophisticated insensibility ; but when the Pythagorases and 
the Platos could stride freely over the whole domain of know- 
ledge, and demand, nothing doubting, from every fact of 
every kind its contribution to the universal scheme ! A lame 
induction had not then led mankind into the persuasion that 
there were two sorts of truth in the world ; the one of which 
was certain, and the other at best but probable. Philosophers 
then, litde dreaming that the truly probable {frohahilis) 
could be supposed to differ from the truly experimental, 
seem to have been not only willing but anxious to make 
themselves extreme upon all points of belief, as if conscious 
that in such trustful daring lay the most coercive conservat- 
ism, — the surest preventive of actual extravagance in what- 
ever direction. Their faith in the every-day details of know- 
ledge did not, upon the occurrence of apparent discrepancies 
therein, extinguish their faith in the underlying principles 
which maintain an ever-increasing predominance in truly 
reflecting minds, nor yet in the ever-unfolding and possibly 
unbroken consistency of the whole course of the created 
universe. Intellectual prosperity has now too largely relaxed 
our intellectual rigor. Man, being '' in honor," " understand- 
eth not." The very success of those hardy ancients in their 
introvertive industry has .come to be regarded as failure, and 
their strength as little more than weakness. How^ have we 
been almost taught even to '' account their lives madness, and 
their end without honor !" Nevertheless, how well might we 
long for an adequate share of the same method and coherency 
of intelligence which they so triumphantly derived from their 
scanty materials, and without which our m.ental wealth must 
be an incumbrance, and may become a bane. 



12 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

Certaint to be ^^ ^^ Universally acknowledged that certainty 
despaired of in IS pre-eminently attainable in the science of 
no department of Mathematics. It may therefore be assumed 

knowledge, . 

that if the foundations of knowledge are in any 
case accessible by all men, they must be especially so in the 
principles of that science. It is the aim of this essay to show 
that there is a universal thought which is the object of individ- 
ual thinking, or that all science is based upon pure observa- 
tion, with no empirical admixture of hypothetical, or theoret- 
ical anticipation of natural facts, on the part of the observing 
mind. If this can be demonstrated as a primary theorem even 
in Mathematics, not only must every vestige and avenue of 
uncertainty be excluded from that science, but by virtue of the 
applicability of the same laws of perception and of thought 
which have there such free and fruitfid scope, to the develop- 
ment of other branches of knowledge which are undisputedly 
grounded upon the same universal principle of direct observa- 
tion or rigid inference, the objective reality of all, in founda- 
tion and in superstructure, must be equally established. The 
whole creation will thus be intelligibly presented to our imag- 
ination as a continuous temple of truth and beauty, albeit 
more or less vaguely, while the lingering veil of moral evil 
shall at all obscure the perfect designs of the divine Creator, 
and retard the full appreciation of the willing worshiper. 

Mathematics a Taking Mathematics, then, as a type of Sci- 

type of all know- cucc at large, let us proceed to consider its 
ledge in its Origin hlstory uudcr the three heads expressed in the 

Development and '' ^ '■ 

Tradition. Theses three followlug ThcSCS ; vIz : 

propounded. j^ ^hat the sclcuce of Mathematics, like 

other provinces of knowledge, originates exclusively in the 
observation of certain objective qualities of things. 

II. That its cultivation is conducted only by the same In- 
tellectual processes of imaginary analysis and imaginary com- 
bination, otherwise called Abstraction and Reasoning, which 
are adopted in other sciences ; and not by the aid of any sys- 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 13 

tem or prelude of mere hypothesis, apart from those processes 
or unknown to other sciences. 

III. That its exposition, or communication from mind to 
mind, being accomplished by the emblematic embodying of 
the ideas and subjective processes thus arising in appropriate 
objective symbols, which symbols have not the same imme- 
diate connection and apparent identity with their subjects, 
which the original objects had with their proper images or 
perceptions in the mind,* depends upon and proves (as does 
the language of all original thought) the existence, assumed 
and admitted though not expressed, of a little reflective capa- 
city in each of the parties, and also of a will on either side 
struggling for the union of agreement. In other words, the 
essential elements and methods of all speech are involved in 
even the simplest mathematical demonstrations. 

In approaching the examination of these For the definition 
Theses, it becomes a preliminary duty to as- of Mathematics, 
sume some definition of the subject which they concern, with 
whatever novelty of form present perspicuity may require. 
Let us then simply define Mathematics to be the science which 
treats of Matter, as it is known in its universal properties, 
whether original or derived. 

The consideration of this definition of course 

, .,, T • 1 • • i. 1 i. some analysis ne- 

involves a still prehmmary decision as to what ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^_ 
are the universal properties of matter which erties of matter, or 

^ ' , r ^ i -i • l.\ ' ' the relations of mat- 

are objects of knowledge, with some mquiry ^er to sense 
by the way into the nature and objects of sen- 
sation in general. 

*It is impossible but that any one who does not thus distinguish between 
the connection of words with thoughts and that of thoughts with things, will 
be often disappointed in his attempts at conversation or demonstration. The 
more artificial and superfiicial connection between words and thoughts is so 
apt to supersede and render nugatory the more natural and profound con- 
nection of thoughts with things, that there can be no profitable communion 
between parties neither of whose memory is in this respect rectified by phil- 
osophy, or by the religious faith which includes the power of philosophy. 
2 



14 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 



Transcendental 



In the present state of general science, it 
cannot be presumed that all the properties 

matter. ^ '- '■ 

which may be ascribed to matter, are strictly 
peculiar to it. Impenetrability, for instance, may be sup- 
posed to be equally a property of the universal medium, 
sometimes called "ether," or more definitely ^(25i-/;;?<?t/<?, * 
which interpenetrates and connects the atoms and massive 
aggregations which are proj^erly known as matter. By this 
attribute of impenetrability, this refined medium may per- 
haps more immediately aftect the nobler organs of " special" 
sense, those, namely, of sight, smell, taste and hearing (of 
this at least as regards the direction of sound), without that 
intervening mechanical impression which seems necessary to 
the action of the " general " senses known as the tactile and 
the muscular. But inasmuch as these baser senses may be 
found to suffice of themselves for the apprehension of the 
attributes of matter, and the use of those finer in the appre- 
ciation of matter by these attributes or qualities, is merely 
the result of an education which they receive by their co- 
operation with the baser, it seems incumbent upon us to 
confine our attention to the senses of Touch and of Muscular 
Resistance, as the primary and proper avenues of all mathe- 
matical ideas, so far as those ideas may be found to be de- 
rived from without us. 

The inherent properties of matter, or ob- 

Proximate ana]y- • , r- , / 155 i • ^ l\ 

sis of the properties J^cts of "general sensation, may be thus 
of matter, pure and enumerated : 

""''^'^' (i.) /7;2/^;2g^'r(3;^27/4y; or distinctness of sub- 

stance, by means of which the presence of one sort of matter 
excludes that of any other sort, or of any other portion of the 
same sort. 

(2.) Interrupted extent; or finity of substance, whereby 
matter is susceptible of every variety of form. 

(3.) Duration ; or permanence of existence, which is also, 

* YxQWi passwi^ medium. A mere suggestion by the author. 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 15 

or at least may be, Interrupted or limited, so far as it is an 
object of sense. 

(4.) Ine7'tia; or dependence of condition, exhibited alike 
in the phenomenon of motion and in that of rest. 

(5.) Impressibility; or mutability of condition, exhibited 
under the influence of chemical or other invisible power, 
by the variations of motion in all forms of attraction and 
repulsion. 

Those chemical or physiological habitudes 

T ■ , r l^ Some mixed prop- 

of matter v^aiich are distmct trom these me- ^^^5^3 ^^^ universal, 
chanical, such as Temperature, Color, Taste, and so not concerned 
etc., though observable, some or all of them, ^" ^ lemaics. 
in combination with all matter, appear not to belong inhe- 
rently to matter itself, but to be plainly imparted to it by the 
immaterial agency or agencies concerned, which cannot as 
yet be accurately designated, even by name. Again, the 
universal qualities of matter just now recounted, are probably 
not all in themselves primary and elementary. But that 
question is here irrelevant, since they have yet to be com- 
bined among themselves to furnish the perceptions and ideas 
which are the primary and secondary materials of mathe- 
matical science. 

These combinations, or compound and still 

. . , Composition of 

universal qualities of matter, as known in the mathematical mate- 
mind, may be thus announced : "ais, present and 

First; the perception or idea of Space, re- ''^p''^^^° ^ 
suiting from (i) in combination with (2). 

Second; the perception or idea of Multiplicity or Number, 
from simultaneous repetitions of the same combination. 

Third; the idea of Time from (i) and (3),with the aid of 
memory. The idea of Number may also thus arise, by the 
same aid ; and by this duality of origin, the idea of Number 
may become a representative of both Space and Time in con- 
junction with their subordinate attribute of quantitative pro- 
portion. And it is here worthy of note, that since Time dif- 
fers from Space in being known only through the aid of 



l6 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

memory, its idea can never, like that of Space, be supposed 
to be instantaneously present in our calculations. Therefore, 
although we deal with Space, as an idea, either immediately 
or through the representation of Number, we can only esti- 
mate and apply the idea of Time, by the imaginary or repre- 
sentative means. 

F'ourth; the perception or idea of Motion or Velocity, 
from (i) and (4), under the influence of the unknown power 
or powers which we can only vaguely designate by the 
terms vital, chemical, cosmical, etc. 

Fifth; the perception or idea of Force or Momentum, 
from (i) and (5), also under the influence of power acting 
from beyond the sphere of natural perception. 

We already find a corroboration of our 
The assumed de- assumcd definition of Mathematics, in the ob- 
lltwated'"''"'' servation that these last-named cognitions, 
though not, like that of Time, dependent in 
any degree upon previous mental evidence, can, like it, only 
enter into mathematical inquiries by the representation of 
Space or Number; the reason in both cases being essentially 
the same, namely, that a part of the evidence upon which 
they arise is simply foreign to matter, as matter. 

In accordance WMth this enumeration of its 

Its farther con- . , , , , • i 

sideration merged proxmiatcly elementary materials, we may 
in that of the first now repeat in fuller form our previously 
assumed definition of Mathematics, as being 
the science which treats of Matter, as known in its universal 
and inherent but compound properties or qualities. Space, 
Number, and (so far as its nature appears) Time, and in the 
partly inherent and partly derived compound properties or 
qualities. Motion and Force. We thus also, it must be re- 
marked, arrive at a re-statement* of the first of our three 

* As the present Essay in its original shape was written before the appear- 
ance of Dr. Whewell's Novum Organon Renovatum, it is with some mortifi- 
cation that I confess my ignorance of that work until this had been revised on 
the eve of publication. With the exception of the brief mention made of In- 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 17 

Theses in more explicit form, except inasmuch as the actual 
origin of every science consists in the application of observing 
powers to the observable things. Let us now repeat and ex- 
amine those Theses in detail. 

I. "That the science of Mathematics, like other provinces 
of knowledge, originates exclusively in the observation of cer- 
tain objective qualities of things." 

This first Thesis being, as just now re- 
marked, little more than a repetition of the Possible objec- 
assumed definition of the science, particular ^^"'^ *° '^ ^°'''^' 
consideration of it may now be limited to an 
examination of such objections against the new definition, as 
may probably arise from a comparison with old ones. These 
may be considered under two heads : 

I. The subjects of Infinity and Nihility, 
which although out of the reach of human i^s omissions, only 

° apparent. 

observation may perhaps by some be inad- 

duction and Deduction in the text on p. 25, 1 am constrained to throw into the 
margin any remarks suggested by and extracts derived from that lucid and 
compendious code of progressive Philosophy. The citation next following 
may possibly assist the reader to bear in mind the distinction assumed in the 
text above, between the definition of the province, and the beginning of the 
work of Mathematics, — between the verbal designation of the field, and the 
actual breaking of the ground : — " In collecting scientific truths by Induction 
we often find a Definition and a Proposition established at the same time, — in- 
troduced together, and mutually dependent on each other. The combination 
of the two constitutes the inductive act, and we may consider the Definition as 
representing the superinduced Conception, and the Proposition as exhibiting 
the Colligation of Facts." (Bk. 2, Ch. 5, §5.) 

Here, as well as anywhere may also be cited some remarks which may per- 
haps to some minds enforce the external origin of our ideas of Number, Space, 
etc., by showing that forgetfulness of that origin is, or would be, only natural ; 
so that our primitive perceptions must be more or less laboriously mined out, 
so to speak, from present accumulations of knowledge, however comparatively 
vast or meagre : " In every inference by Induction, there is a Conception super- 
induced upon the Facts." (Bk. 2, Ch. 5, § 3.) " Although in every Induction a 
new Conception is superinduced upon the Facts, yet this once effectually done, 
the novelty of the Conception is overlooked, and the Conception is considered 
as a part of the Fact." (Bk. 2, Ch. 6, § 3.) See also Bk. 3, Ch. 4, §4. 
2* B 



1 8 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

vertently supposed to lie within the range of mathematical 
inquiry, are not necessarily, and therefore not scientifically to 
be so regarded. It is indeed often necessary to advert to 
them ; but they may then be more simply regarded as form- 
ing the unavoidable boundaries, than as contributing to the 
subject materials of the science. 

2. It is scarcely necessary to remark that 
Its innovations, ^j^^.j different vicv^s havc prevailed from 

essential. -' ^ 

those now presented as to the nature and 
origin of our ideas of Space, Time, and Number ; and as it 
is from this previous prevalence that exceptions to the pres- 
ent Thesis and definition are chiefly to be apprehended, a 
careful consideration of them becomes here expedient. 

Space, being deemed capable of existing in the form of sur- 
face without bulk or capacity, and in that of linear extension 
without either surface or bulk, and being regarded as some- 
thing which in itself partakes of infinitude, has thence been 
naturally supposed to have an existence, finitely in the human 
intelligence, infinitely in the divine, wholly independent of 
matter.* Time, also, probably in part from the circumstance 
of its requiring an obvious mental eflbrt for its apprehension ; 
and partly, perhaps, from its being found the most importantf 
of mundane resources, — the uniform channel of every exter- 
nal influence which maintains or modifies the condition of 
man, — has had a like independent and purely intellectual 

* Probably the idea which is most generally conveyed by the current modes 
of defining and treating of Space, is that of a sort of ocean in which material 
things exist much as fish are scattered through the sea. And it may there- 
fore perhaps at first sight appear as absurd to think of Space as being a 
quality of matter, as it would be to call the sea an attribute of fishes. But it 
must be noticed that the analogy fails in an essential particular. The fish 
displaces the sea, so that where one is, the other is not. Probably no sane 
person will assert the same of matter in Space. 

t Possibly this peculiar importance of Time may be finally found to result 
from the fact of its not being universally a quality of matter except under the 
*' curse" (Gen. iii. 17) which the earth incurred in consequence of the fall of 
Adam ; of which curse mutability, the universal measure of Time, may be an 
essential and representative feature. 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 19 

or even spiritual existence ascribed to it. Numbers, we are 
in the habit of using so freely in their imaginary or abstract 
meaning, sometimes as a gymnastic labor, and sometimes 
as a wholesome relaxation of the mind, that it may be still 
less surprising that we should lose sight of their exterior 
origin. 

However these misapprehensions may have Mischiefs of tra- 
arisen, it is easily to be understood how, in ^i^ionai confusion, 
accordance with them, the science of Mathematics has hap- 
pened to be defined in a mode very different from that here 
suggested, that is, as being wholly subjective in its nature, or 
originating solely in the mind.* That it is accordingly a struc- 
ture based upon mere hypothesis, or upon assumed dogmata 
for which no demonstrable authority could be adduced ; — that 
its sure working and safe guidance are therefore merely a 
lucky coincidence, and are no exam^^le or evidence of any 
attainable principle of certainty in human affairs — any pre- 
siding order or convincing unity of truth ; — but that, so far as 
appears, all things are under the direction of a capricious 
power of Fate, or mere law of Chance, which may tolerate 
this inferior and partial uniformity (to such the solitary mys- 
tery of the universe, the eye of course, seeing in all things 
"only what it brings with it the power to see") merely as 
the tangible substratum which is requisite to uphold the 
chaotic riot of a libertine life ; — these are the conclusions 
which the ingenuity and influence of the votaries of vice have 
not been slow to forge, and to link as inferences to that im- 
movable staple of primary consciousness, which mathematical 
truth in some way gives to all. Scholars, by confusing ob- 
jective materials with subjective processes, have necessarily 
curtailed the true import of the science in its spiritual as well 

* The intellect of ages may be said to speak in these words of the emi- 
nent and excellent philosopher and historian of Science, already quoted : — 
" The pure Mathematical Sciences can hardly be called Inductive Sciences. 
Their principles are not obtained by Induction from Facts, but are necessa- 
rily assumed in reasoning upon the subject-matter which those Sciences in- 
volve." — Nov. Org. Ren,, B. 2, ch. 9. 



20 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

as in its material aspect ; and the twofold mutilation can only 
be apologized for as being in accordance with the treatment 
received at their hands, perhaps inevitably under any hereto- 
fore prevailing regime of metaphysics,* by that coveted ab- 
stract and educt of all knowledge, which is termed the Sci- 
ence of Ontology. For it is surely observable that earnest 
and consecutive reasoners upon this comprehensive theme, 
have been almost uniformly landed, according to their taste 
and previous training, either in the extravagance of an empty 
materialism on the one hand, or in that of an exclusive spirit- 
ualism on the other : wdiile those who have advocated more 
catholic doctrine have as generally done so by a process rather 
of compromise than of comprehension, having been either 
secured, at the expense of consistency, by an original and in- 
superable dread of the glaring incompleteness ; or else influ- 
enced, however indirectly, by the overwhelming weight of 
the practical perceptions of the as yet unlearned mass of 
mankind. So little, it seems, may one science, or all science, 
avail to prove that which in fact must be the very beginning 
of any science, or learning, or proving, namely, that there are 
present to the operation both an animating soul and an ani- 
mated organism, — each with its congenial adjuncts. 

Waiving, however, any actual appeal to 
Its existence de- metaphysical Standards as a thing here un- 

nionstrable by ad- ^j^ ^ ^ ^ . ^^^^ v j-ecogulzed 

nutted axioms. ' ^ J J & 

and rigid mathematical law, these speculative 
views of the subjective nature of Space and Number, and of 
Time so far as it can be represented by them in mathematical 



Any number of nothings results in Nothing, 

irst, as to Num- 
ber. 



First, as to Num. ^^ ^^^^ fraction of Infinity remains infinite, for 



the one reason above intimated, that those sub- 

* In the words of a deservedly popular writer, " The establishment of a 
philosophy of discovery and invention must await the establishment of a 
philosophy of the mind which discovers and invents." — Edv^in P. Whipple 
on the Philosophy of Bacon. 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 21 

jects not being objects of perception, are unalterable even in 
idea, by the means of science. It is surely in vain to say in 
illustration of the subjective doctrine of Number, that " two 
and two make four," and that " the whole is greater than the 
part," and to argue as is usual, that these and other such 
phrases have an ideal or intelligible truth apart from any re- 
lation to numerable or measurable objects. For these ex- 
pressions then must mean, that " two nothings and two noth- 
ings make four nothings," and that " the whole of nothing is 
greater than the part of nothing ;" which are at best but 
random and gratuitous assertions, since by our acknowledged 
rule the two nothings and two nothings do not make four 
nothings, any more than they make one, or any other number 
of nothings : neither is the whole of nothing greater than the 
part of nothing, but by the same principle precisely equal to 
it. The subjective origin of the idea of Number thus exhibits 
itself as but an imaginary corner-stone of science. 

The similar fiction of the " three dimen- 
sions" of Space, two at least of which can Secondly, as to 

only exist subjectively, convenient, necessary, 
and even beautiful, as it may seem to be, may in like manner 
be regarded as unfounded and inexpedient. Space must 
have at least a difterential* value in two directions, con- 
joined with an estimable value in the remaining one, to 
make it truly appreciable. In this case the appreciable 
dimension will be mere length, and we will have a substan- 
tial and measurable line. If it be appreciable in two direc- 
tions, we have a surface or area which is also a tangible 
reality, and which is estimable by the measured line. If it 
be appreciable in the third direction also, we have again 
genuine Space, now rendered complete to the sense, and also 

* That is, a value such as may always be imagined, which shall be defi- 
nite in itself, and yet too small to be estimated in its results except by its 
practical equality with other like values on the one hand, or by its unaltered 
ratio to them when they have been reduced to the same degree, on the 
other. 



22 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

estimable by the repeated apph'catlon of the measured hue. 
We have thus an evidence for the objective nature of Space, 
suppHed by the mode in which alone it is conceivable for the 
idea of Space to have originated. Again, both surface and 
bulk being estimable by arithmetical multiplication, and 
even length being always denotable by Number, we find a 
confirmation of this view in our mode of computing Space, 
which is identical with the argument already supplied by 
the consideration of Number; the contrary view being here 
also a violation of the inevitable law, that notliing produces 
nothing. Two triangles having their three sides equal, each 
to each, the lines and surfaces being defined in the old mode, 
can thus be equal to each other, only as they are also equal 
to a quadrangle containing two figures so defined, or to any 
other such impossible polygon ; that is, by being each equal 
to nothing. 

In quitting this branch of our subject, it may 
Extraneous in- ^^^ ^^ supcrfluous to remark, that although 

ducements to rec- ^ ' ^ 

tification. the vicws now advocated, must, as received, 

occasion some slight modification in the lan- 
guage of Mathematics, this result cannot but be ultimately of 
use, if it be only in the clearing of the gateways to the science 
in its different departments, and so smoothing the paths of 
beginners. Perhaps even minds familiarized to the prevailing 
inaccurate modes of expression, may find the temporary dis- 
location of ideas incurred in such a change amply compensated 
by an expanding appreciation of the truth of the homespun 
axiom, that " Well begun is half done," and by the whole- 
some assurance, that truth in general can only be thoroughly 
appreciated in so far as the end may be seen in the beginning. 

II. " That its cultivation is conducted only by the same in- 
tellectual processes of imaginary analysis and imaginary com- 
bination, otherwise called Abstraction and Reasoning, which 
are adopted in other sciences ; and not by the aid of any 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 23 

system or j^i'elude of mere hypothesis, apart from those pro- 
cesses, or unknown to other sciences." 

The consideration of the second Thesis has 
been in a great degree anticipated in that of . /"^P"?^^^. ^"" 

fc3 «3 ^ Sight the clue of de- 

the first. It has now been argued that mere veiopment. 
hypothesis does not either primarily furnish 
the elementary facts of mathematical knowledge, nor mingle 
permanently with the process of their intellectual apprehen- 
sion and combination. It remains to be shown that the con- 
tinued development of these facts and processes in an ever- 
serviceable system, is also essentially free from arbitrary 
assumption, and adheres to the basis of a true or original 
ground in nature, notwithstanding that that ground may even 
in this comparatively prosaic science, be somewhat concealed 
and forgotten, in consequence of the specific materials which 
are the subjects of systematic development, being often them- 
selves a mental development or construction thereupon. This 
imaginative mode of development, and seeming loss of the 
foundation in the continuing superstructure, may perhaps be 
most readily illustrated by an analysis and comparison of the 
four primary operations of Arithmetic. 

Two only of these operations, Addition and 
Subtraction, can be said actually to occur in xampes. 

nature, and to be truly imitated in our calculations, as any 
simple idea in mind or memory imitates or reflects a percep- 
tion of nature. Multiplication and Division cannot occur out 
of the mind, except as it may be allowable so to speak of 
them as imaginary consequences of repeated additions and 
subtractions. Addition having occurred by the rejoetition in 
nature of several equal or like elements, the quality of Num- 
ber thus comes distinctly and impressively into view ; and 
being, by the legitimate action of the imagination, abstracted 
from the process of Addition as a ready representative of the 
productive agent, this quality of Number has quite naturally 
received first the imaginary office, and then the name, of 
Multiplier. The mathematical process of Multiplication is 



24 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

the retracing,* in a reverse order, of the growth which thus 
arises, as it were, from external nature into the mind. That 
is, as in the searching appreciation of the operation without 
us, we rise from the result therein observed, through an im- 
aginary multlpHcatlon to an Imaginary multiplier ; so, when 
we proceed to anticipate by calculation the result of any like 
operation j^i'obably or possibly to occur in nature, we begin 
w^ith realizing the " abstract" multiplier in the mind, pursue 
it downward through its mental combination or multiplication 
with the " concrete "t number concerned, and alight, with all 
confidence In the result, upon the common ground of concrete 
ideas, with an Intelligence of natural truth as clear as if we 
were remembering facts as they had formerly happened, in- 
stead of predicting them from an exploration of their rela- 
tions. The connection between Subtraction and Division Is 
of course quite analogous to that between Addition and Mul- 
tiplication. Addition and Subtraction are therefore distin- 
guished as being simply ideal imitations In the mind, of what 
may have actually occurred externally, the ideal numbers not 
being severed from the concrete association in which they are 
received into the mind from without ; in Multiplication and 
Division, if they are intelligently performed, man adopts a 
course of his own, whereby he estimates the slow results of ma- 
terial changes without waiting to see them or even to suppose 
them In detail. A true imaginative insight, an intelligence 
dwelling in the secret modes of his perceptions rather than in 
the obvious matter of them. Is evidently necessary in the first 
place to discover to him the fact that the abstract conception 
of Number, when combined with the concrete in the way 

* "Induction moves upward, and Deduction, downward, on the same 
scale." — Whewell, Nov. Org. Ren., Bk. 2, ch. 6, § 18. 

t The reader, if there shall be one, who may not at once recognize the 
justness of the distinction between the "abstract" and the "concrete" ideas 
of Number, as applied respectively to the multiplier and the multiplicand, is 
invited to an examination of the old arithmetical riddle, — to take first the 
square of twenty-five cents, and then the square of the quarter of a dollar, and 
reconcile the results. 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 25 

of Multiplication and Division, must give the results, while 
avoiding the labor, of repeated Addition and Subtraction : and 
the same insight remains as his sufficient authority for classi- 
fying these processes rather according to their mental rank, as 
indicated by their comparative complexity and analytical his- 
tory, than by a reference to the associations under which they 
occur or originate in nature. Thus, upon the common prin- 
ciples of natural science, Multiplication and Division become 
recognized as allied species constituting a true genus, — Ad- 
dition and Subtraction in like manner forming a separate 
genus, of mathematical rules, derivable by processes of in- 
duction, and available for purposes of deduction.* 

Our observations upon mathematical sci- 
ence thus far, concern its development, as Sources of the 

, . . , . J doctrine of hypo- 

distinguished from its demonstration, and are ^j^^^j^ 
equally applicable to its four cardinal branches 
of Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, and Mechanics. In all 
of these the constructive work of imagination, inseparable 
from all development of Science, may assume the appearance 
of random hypothesis, as the form of hypothesis may be in- 
cident to the work of exposition. But to make hypothesis 
therefore the foundation or the law of any of them, were evi- 
dently to confound the channel with the stream. All science 
consisting in the interpretation of nature, and all truth being 
one, all permanent progress of the so-called special sciences 
must be the harmonious growth of component parts of a 
single whole. The fewness, simpleness and universality of 
the primary materials of Mathematics, by securing a facility 
of culture, have induced an overshadowing ideal develop- 
ment, in which their original relationship seems to have been 
entirely lost sight of. This remarkable obscuration is wholly 

* " Tn Induction, besides a mere collection of particulars, there is always a 
itew conception, or principle of connection and unity supplied by the mind, 
and superinduced upon the particulars. . . . In </^^«r//z/^ reasonings^ the gen- 
eral principles are assumed, and the question is concerning their application 
and combination in particular cases."— Whewell, Nov. Org. Ren., B. 2, ch. 6. 
3 



26 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

traceable to the fact, that the foundation of the science in the 
sensible phenomena of nature being comparatively base as 
well as broad, the development of universal thought, in rising 
successively above the level of higher foundations, contributes 
comparatively more from itself in bulk to this meaner, even 
as it derives to itself comparatively more in quality, from 
those nobler sciences. In the eagerness of mental appetite, 
the influences of quantity and quality, of matter and spirit, 
have remained in some degree undistinguished, and the pro- 
cess of discovery been confounded with that of demonstration. 
A few general observations upon the admissibility and 
necessity of hypothetical assumption in the work of demon- 
stration now only remain to be adduced in confirmation of 
our third Thesis. 

III. " That its exposition, or communication from mind to 
mind, being accomplished by the emblematic embodying of 
the ideas and subjective processes thus arising, in appropriate 
objective symbols, which symbols have not the same immedi- 
ate connection and apparent identity with their subjects which 
the original objects had with their proper images or percep- 
tions in the mind, depends upon and proves (as does the lan- 
guage of all original thought) the existence, assumed and ad- 
mitted though not expressed, of a like reflective capacity in 
each of the parties, and also of a will on either side struggling 
for the union of agreement. In other words, the essential 
elements and methods of all speech are involved even in the 
simplest mathematical demonstrations." 

We must here remark the fact, which per- 

Oric;in of Ian- /- i i /- . • i 

guage in a lower, haps first fouud definite expression ni the 

and use in a higher, famOUS WOrk * of JOHN HORNE TOOKE, and 

consciousness. i . i i 

which can never long remain a mystery among 
thinking men, that all the materials of language have origin- 
ated in man's experience of the external world, as derived 
either from surrounding things or from his own phj'sical nature. 
* " Epea Pteroenta ; or, The Diversions of Parley." 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 27 

And mankind, It maybe presumed, are now also prepared both 
to acknowledge and to understand the complementary fact, 
(through want of which the sagacity even of a Tooke was so 
much at fault,) that words, so derived, may be available as a 
medium or spiritual communication, in consequence (and 
only so) of some appreciable sameness or similarity between 
those perceptions of sensible objects with which the words 
originated, and the larger thoughts or deeper emotions which 
the same words are eventually used to express. The fact first 
named may be seen to result from the truth universally ob- 
served or observable, that mankind, whether or not they may 
ultimately attain to a method of mutual acquaintance and un- 
derstanding apart from the avenues of sense, are at least by 
their inherited nature incapable of any intercourse except 
through those avenues, and by means which must be adapted 
to their restricted mode of transit. And in that complement- 
ary fact of the natural availability of such language for such 
elevated service, the sameness or similarity of meaning in 
spheres so diverse is equally accounted for, by that unity of ex- 
perience under diversity of circumstances, which distinguishes 
manhood, upon the assumption (the general or parent hypoth- 
esis, which here becomes necessary simply because it is pos- 
sible and remains as the only supposition which will account 
for the facts) that there is a pre-established analogy, or an 
identity of relations, between the material universe and the 
living body of man on the one hand, and a spiritual universe 
and the human soul on the other. 

The equal reality of these two spheres of ,„^ 

^ ^ -^ _ ■•• All figurative lan- 

existence is therefore, in direct opposition to guage, therefore, a 
the inference or intimation of the author of form of hypothesis. 
"Winged Words," implied in the secret constitution of lan- 
guage, together with an acquired but enduring consciousness 
of a certain identity in their experimental significance ; — an 
identity which maybe occasional and temporary in its details, 
(owing to the variable and transitory nature of our merely 
physical impressions,) but which is sufficient to originate and 



28 MATHEMATICS TYPICAL 

to reinforce indefinitely a language adequate to all social 
purposes. Hence it is observable that words, while retaining 
their primitive meaning, and even after losing it, if familiar- 
ized in any definite accejDtation, are liable to be used in two 
several modes: in their familiar meaning, either primitive or 
secondary, they may be employed to indicate the familiar 
idea of a thing or fact, upon the specific ground of a percep- 
tion, present or past, being common to both parties; and 
they may be appealed to in order to convey an analogical 
meaning, the origin of which has now been conjecturally de- 
fined, on the before mentioned general ground of like reflect- 
ive capacities and co-operating wills. 

, , This distinction, thus arrived at between the 

And, as such, of 

but transitional or two mcthods of language, the literal and the 
educational value. figurative, or the prosaic and the poetic, not 
only indicates and explains that objectively neutral or ambig- 
uous character of all language, by which the same utterance 
may at some times and to some minds be poetical, which at 
a subsequent time or to an already familiarized mind may be 
simply prosaic ; but suggests the farther observation that 
poetry must take the lead of prose in all education, — in every 
propagation, whether earlier or later, of actual thought. In 
such a process mind must ever reach toward mind with 
strictly hopeful or spiritual purpose ; and the struggle becom- 
ing effectual only through the common recognition of a com- 
mon nature and of common aims which are above the sphere 
of sense, — of a nature and aims existing independently of the 
mutable objects with which they are conversant, ever reveals a 
seat of power above the world and not of the world, a spirit- 
ual fastness, from which more mightily than from the coveted 
stand-point of the Syracusan sage, all men, singly and 
jointly, may coerce the things of the world into all the need- 
ful service of the soul. 

That in the general development and appli- 

Ultimate results ^ ® ^ ^ ^\ 

involved in first cation of language there is no ground of dis- 
principies. tiuctiou betwccn Mathematics and other sci- 



OF UNIVERSAL SCIENCE. 29 

ences may perhaps sufficiently appear from these general 
remarks thereupon, taken in connection with our previous 
inquiry into the development of thought in it and them. In 
all there are evidently degrees of thought corresponding to 
degrees of experience, whereby the general principles in- 
volved in particular facts are found to be nothing less than 
primary facts in the order of nature, although at the best but 
secondarily appreciated in the course of investigation and ex- 
position. Like the quinia and morphia of the chemist, they 
are essential elements of a complete history of nature, although 
the process of analysis by which they are revealed is a mental 
rather than a physical one. Their discovery being purely 
reflective or ideal, and their expression for that simple reason 
necessarily metaphorical, the more readily they may be thus 
identified, the more rapidly will the figurative application of 
terms acquire a literal force, and the poetry of aspiration be 
followed by the prose of attainment. One branch of know- 
ledge may thus be comparatively prosaic, but the essential 
history of each alike typifies that of the whole tree. The ex- 
ploration of the mystical and the annexation of the abstract 
thus constitute the course of all earnest investigation ; and all 
science and all literature, so far as they may have escaped, or 
so t^^st as they may throw off, the discrepancies and contami- 
, nations of misdirected zeal and moral depravity, are thus ever 
found to verify the familiar couplet of a classic bard, — 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and GoD the soul/' 

Rejoice, ye watchers ! at the approaching dawn of that eter- 
nal day of truth and freedom, in which all speculation will 
become science and all science intuition ; and in which man- 
kind will distinguish between prose and poetry, only by their 
primary functions of communion and praise. 

1858. 
3* 



NUMBER AS AN OBJECT. 



" At any step of Induction, the inductive proposition is a Theory with re- 
gard to the Facts which it includes, while it is to be looked upon as a Fact 
with respect to the higher generalizations in which it is included. In any 
other sense the opposition of Fact and Theory is untenable, and leads to end- 
less perplexity and debate."— Dr. Whewell. 

" Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word- 
worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idol- 
ater or symbol-worshiper by nature, . . . but sooner or later all his local 
and temporary symbols must be ground to powder, like the golden calf, — 
word-images as well as metal or wooden ones. Rough work, — hard labor, — 
but the only way to get at truth." — Dr. Holmes. 

CONSEQUENT upon the too natural confusion of things 
with thoughts on the one hand, and of thoughts with 
words on the other, is the natural tendency of traditional 
philosophy to lapse from the firm ground of observation into 
the delusive quicksands of speculation. Except as our human 
nature is continually inspired by a Wisdom higher than its 
own, to a continual refinement, both of thought and of lan- 
guage, it is evident that we must corrupt the universal system 
of truth by the infusing of individual peculiarities, or mar it 
by the imputing of individual limitations, in all our efforts to 
systematize our ever accumulating stores of intellectual attain- 
ment. The philosophy of Aristotle may be said to have thus 
become engulfed in the absurdities of the mediaeval schools ; 
while the profounder system of Plato has survived only to 
meet a like fate in the extravagances of modern rationalism. 
More justly than those of many professed followers, may the 

30 



NUMBER AS AN OBJECT. 31 

labors of Bacon, and Locke, and many other less appreciated 
observers and inquirers of modern times, be regarded as sup- 
plementary, and not antagonistic, to those of the ancient mon- 
archs of mind, in recalling the attention of mankind from 
tradition to experience, from criticism to investigation, from 
vs^ords to things. 

Things or objects are the proper subject of all study and of 
all teaching. Let us however avoid the too common error of 
confusing an object, with an aim. An object is properly 
something which is at hand : an aim is something which is 
ever, in some sense, at a distance. The aim of an intelligent 
and spiritual being is nothing less than the inexhaustible treas- 
ure of divine Truth. A demonstrable object is a part of his 
present wealth of knowledge, although as such also a means 
of future acquisition. Objects are the only proper, because 
the only possible, subjects of investigation and demonstration. 
Surely it is an evidence that the intellect of our age had wan- 
dered far into the wilderness of self-conceit, that the plan of 
object-teaching should be announced to us almost as a dis- 
covery, and welcomed by us as a refreshing novelty. In the 
motion of the mind as in that of the body, the headlong attitude 
is unfavorable to safe progress. In both we must plant our 
feet firmly upon the earth of tangible realities, if we would 
have the free use of all our faculties. 

In speaking of objects, we of course mean in the first place 
objects of sensation, as these must be our first means of com- 
munication, either with young people, or with others who 
may not have undergone a mental training similar to our own, 
so as to become familiar with the intellectual objects, or ideas, 
which wc may have derived from these. Of these objects of 
sensation, which may thus be called primary objects in the 
order of experience, I now purpose to speak of one which I 
think must sooner or later be taught more simply and accu- 
rately, and therefore of course more efficiently than it now is. 
I mean the object of Number, which we are more accus- 
tomed to hear spoken of as a deduction or creation of the in- 



32 NUM^^ER AS AN OBJECT. 

tellect, than as a sensible quality of matter. For the sake of 
perspicuity, let us premise the consideration of this subject 
with a glance at another more undisputed quality of matter, 
and object of sensation. 

The object of Color may be taken as a representative 
quality of matter, although, like all the rest, it depends for its 
manifestation upon the subtler and more diffused medium in 
which the principles of light, heat, attraction, repulsion, and 
polarity, appear to meet and blend. Color, we know, may 
either belong to a mass or masses of matter naturally, or be 
imparted by art. The same is evidently true of Number ; 
and although the quality of Number may be doubtless im- 
parted or altered with greater facility than that of Color, I 
cannot think that this is a sufficient plea for our laying claim 
to its idea as a creation or original endowment of the intel- 
lect. Similar remarks might be made upon the idea of 
Space, and to some extent upon that of Time ; but let us 
now proceed to consider how this view of our knowledge of 
Number may concern the teacher of the science of Numbers. 

The few remarks which I have to offer on this question, if 
novel, will not I trust seem unpractical, nor if simple, 
trifling, to those who know the craving of the youthful and 
untutored mind for original knowledge, and the inhumanity 
of offering a stone to the son who asks for bread. 

In the first place then, it may be observed that as the Idea 
of Number exists in the mind as a part of memory, so the 
combinations of numbers are essentially mere matters of 
memory. We remember that two and two make four, just 
as we remember that blue and yellow make green ; but we 
cannot conceive of a numerous nothing, any more than of a 
colored nothing. When therefore the pupil demands of the 
teacher his authority for saying that two and two make four, 
or that a whole is greater than a part, the teacher may wisely 
refrain from replying that the doctrine is a self-evident truth, 
apart from its application to matter. By basing his assertion 
wholly on the ground of observation, by contenting himself. 



NUMBER AS AN OBJECT. 33 

for instance, with showing that two sticks and two sticks 
make four sticks, he may both guard his pupil from the pre- 
sumption of more than mortal independence of intellect, and 
himself from the danger of being requested to explain how, 
upon conceded mathematical principles, two and two make 
forty, or an hundred, as truly as they make four, if the num- 
bers do not refer to anything. 

Another result of this view of the origin of our knowledge 
of Number, is a consistent theory of the intellectual processes 
of Multiplication and Division. Although, for instance, 25 
times 25, if the multiplicand be considered a merely abstract 
number, are equal to nothing ; and although 25 cents cannot 
be multiplied by 25 cents, as a late eminent teacher remarked, 
any more than 25 lawyers by 25 bears, yet 25 cents may be 
multiplied by 25, as surely as one cent may be, and without 
any danger of our being at a loss to decide whether the result 
is 65 cents, or $6.25. Here again the labor of intellect, being 
confined to perception, recollection and inference, without any 
recourse to the hypothetical postulates which have heretofore 
been so largely made the basis of mathematical science, en- 
ables all to unite intelligently on the firm ground of natural 
truth. There is hypothesis of course in every movement of 
the intellect. In the present case both the more concrete 
multiplicand and the more abstract multiplier, are hypothe- 
ses, as the result is also an hypothesis until it shall be realized 
in some external negotiation. But inasmuch as the operation 
is not ostensibly based upon hypothesis, we may thus far at 
least avoid countenancing the too often convenient doctrine, 
that there are fields of knowledge in which it is our right and 
duty to be unintelligible. How can any doctrine be essen- 
tially unintelligible, in which the teacher may have followed 
the example of the beloved disciple and veteran apostle of the 
Lord Christ, in proclaiming only that which his eyes have 
seen and his hands have handled, of the object which is his 
subject.? 

C 



CURRENT ARITHMETIC. 



That which is wanting cannot be numbered." — Eccles. 

My ciphering is strange work, I find. 

I first take nothings, and in sport 
Pretend them somethings. In my mind 

I count them, till I cut them short, 

And say, So many. Then some more 
I take, and mix with them, and call 

It ADDING. Or to stint my store, 
I say SUBTRACT a part from all. 

Such sport is this Arithmetic ! 

My nothing-somethings thus at will 
I call to mind, and, sparse or thick, 

By pure pretence arrange them still. 

But one thing more : — as I enact, 
I still remember what I do : 

I COUNT, I ADD, and I SUBTRACT, 

I order, and keep all in view. 

In added addings, I pretend, 
I have a helper close at hand : 

A counted counter is this friend, 
To MULTIPLY at my command. 

And in repeated stintings, too, 
By like invention or pretence, 

I find a friend like work to do, 
Dividing, less in fact than sense. 

And so are all the other rules 
Which fag the faculties of youth. 

Like all the cant of all the schools. 
Partly pretence, and partly truth. 



34 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 



"The earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revelation of the sons 
of God. Because the creation has been subject to vanity, not wiHingly, but 
by reason of Him who made it subject in hope. For the creation itself 
will also be set free from the servitude of corruption, into the glorious free- 
dom of the children of God. Forasmuch as we know, that all the creation 
both groans and is in labor together until now. Not only so, but also our- 
selves, who have the first fruit of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in our- 
selves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body." — RoM. 
viii. 19-23. 

PANTHEISM and Transcendentalism are terms of mod- 
ern date, which, belonging rather to the history of grop- 
ing speculation, than to that of definite progress in doctrine, 
must convey to the mind of the general reader but a vague 
or a doubtful meaning. Perhaps they may be most dis- 
tinctly defined by saying that Pantheism is the doctrine or 
-heresy which confounds God with the created universe, and 
Transcendentalism that which confounds Man with it. Per- 
haps it may also be safely said that the two are fused to- 
gether into the most subtle form of practical Atheism, by a 
third heresy, which has received the name of Rationalism, 
and which consists essentially in the confusion, still more 
glaringly absurd when thus separately stated, of the omnis- 
cient and prescient Creator with the ignorant though per- 
cipient creature. Of the three, Transcendentalism is evi- 
dently the doctrine or assumption which approaches nearest 
to being an aspect of universal truth or experience, since the 
external universe is practically found, as well as divinely 

35 



36 THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

promised, to be the servant of man, so far as man is master 
of himself. It is chiefly the want of a due regard to this con- 
dition of self-mastery or self-subjection, resulting from a want 
of appreciation of the crucifying discipline through which 
only it can be truly attained, which makes the doctrine taught 
under that name unsound and impracticable. We can all 
see the point of the friendly satire in which its most famous 
representative has been depicted, as one 

"In whose eyes all creation is duly respected, 
As parts of himself, just a little projected ;" 

but it is no less evident that the conquest of external nature 
is an unceasing result of the continuous march of intellect, 
which again is equally seen in an enlarged view of history, 
to follow the spread of the religion of self-denial. " Man," 
says the ingenious author* of The Sexuality of Nature^ "is 
nature concentrated ; Nature, man diflused." There is evi- 
dently a sense in which the outward creation as a whole in- 
creasingly becomes a sort of social, dividual body to the gen- 
eral human mind, however the believers in an unregenerate 
"self-respect" may fall short in its attempted possession. 
Thus far therefore we may recognize an element of truthful- 
ness in the assumptions of Transcendentalism, without accept- 
ing its crude extravagances, or at all committing ourselves to 
the support of the associated delusions of Pantheism and 
Rationalism. A few words of acknowledgment are here due 
to our authority for the somewhat transcendental variation 
from the common version of the above cited extract from the 
Epistle to the Romans. 

Little appears to be known of Anthony Purver, except the 
history of his Translation of the Bible. Of the work itself 
almost as little is known even to his successors in religious 
profession. I There is ground for believing that the fruits of 
his industry in that labor of love have not yet been received 

* Leopold Hartley Grindon. 
t Of the Society of Friends. 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 37 

by the religious and literary world with the appreciation 
which they deserve ; but as the triumphs of truth and justice 
are ever rendered more complete by delay, we may regard 
this circumstance without regret, on account either of the 
work or of the workman. " He who believeth maketh not 
haste," because in and through faith he has " the substance 
of things hoped for." With the qualification of a scholarship 
which was rather profound than general or promiscuous, our 
Friend seems to have brought to his work a zeal for literal 
accuracy, which was alike removed from a superstitious rever- 
ence for his materials, and from a presumptuous confidence 
in his own powers of interpretation. He often calls our 
attention to instances in which the same word, occurring in 
different parts of the original text, has been diversely ren- 
dered in our authorized version, at the discretion or caprice 
of the translators ; thus perhaps indicating his conviction that 
the simple language of pure inspiration needs not, nor admits 
of the gloss of an artificial variety. But in one remarkable 
instance he deviates, in this respect, both from the original 
Scripture and from other versions. He presumes, for once, 
to suggest that the original utterance may not have been suf- 
ficiently explicit for all time. When the apostle Peter, after 
telling us to "honor all men," specifically enjoins upon us to 
"honor the king," he thinks that this is not enough, and is 
constrained to say " reverence the king," by way of increasing 
the distinction. In this latter half of the Nineteenth Century 
such scrupulosit}^ may probably seem superfluous to readers 
on either side of the Atlantic Ocean ; but we may at least 
honor the independence of thought which proceeded from 
such loyalty, as his doubtless was, to the political sovereignty 
under which he flourished. Our opening text is given accord- 
ing to Purver's Translation, and may be regarded as a fair 
specimen of his literal fidelity. 

" The land of Egypt, the house of bondage" of which we 
so often read in the record of the dealings of Almighty God 
with his chosen people under the patriarchal and Mosaic dis- 
4 



38 THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

pensations, is an impressive type of the spiritual condition in 
which all the children of Adam enter into the world, and in 
which they must at the best remain, except as " the spirit of 
bondage" may be exchanged for "the spirit of adoption." 
The power of Him who came to bruise the head of the Ser- 
pent, and his power alone, is still able, as joined with, to re- 
move the curse of the fall in its individual application, and to 
restore us "from the servitude of corruption to the glorious 
freedom of the children of God." 

As the apostle elsewhere writes, " whilst we are at home 
in the body, we are absent from the Lord ;" and it is accord- 
ingly natural for the carnal mind to forget its divine Author 
and Benefactor. In making idols of the riches of creation, 
we may thus practically and even avowedly deny the only 
Creator ; but we will not find that such fiilse devotion can 
secure us from the power of evil. A much-admired poetess,* 
whose voice is but lately hushed, has sadly sung, 

*' The fool hath said, There is no God, 
But none, There is no sorrow." 

Disappointments, vexations and perplexities are sure to as- 
sail and oppress the soul which is not redeemed from all reli- 
ance upon objects of sense and upon merely human sympathy, 
through the indwelling of" the Spirit of Him that raised up 
Jesus froin the dead." That merely human " favor is deceit- 
ful," as merely outward " beaut}^ is vain," is a confession 
which has been attributed to one whose knowledge of the 
world was not to be surpassed ; and the lesson is confirmed 
to us by the testimony of the apostle of love, who ranks 
"the pride of life" and " the lust of the eye" with the grovel- 
ing " lust of the flesh," declaring that they all " are not of the 
Father, but of the world." Whatever may be our worldly 
advantages, if we turn away from the offers of the Divine 
Grace which alone is sufficient for us, and which can always 

* Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 39 

adapt our desires to our circumstances, we make ourselves 
the slaves of our circumstances, and tools of the Evil Power, 
who through them seeks to blind our spiritual vision. The 
w^hole creation may thus become a " a house of bondage" to 
the soul which regards not the importunity of the Holy Spirit, 
and which despises the seeming weakness of the cross of 
Christ. On the other hand, the whole creation will assuredly 
become a temple of liberty and gladness and praise, " a new 
heavens and a new earth" beyond the reach of "the second 
death," to all who by a faithful submission and adherence to 
the terms of salvation "obtain a part in the first resurrection." 
Whatever the worldly disadvantages of these may seem to be, 
they will at least be always the contented masters of their 
circumstances, and triumphant in them over the wiles of Satan 
and of human adversaries. 

We read that during the plague of darkness which overtook 
their oppressors, " the Children of Israel had light in their 
dwellings." So, in the perfect dispensation in which all 
transient types are permanently fulfilled, the singleness of 
vision, which consists in an unreserved and uncalculating de- 
votion to duty, is the prescribed condition upon which alone 
ourw^hole bodies maybe filled with light. Imaginations and 
inventions are of no avail for the attainment of this signal 
blessing. Both the individual culture, which is grounded on 
the mere love of what we may call beauty, and the officious 
action which aims even at the welfare of our brethren other- 
wise than as an object secondary to the discharge of our own 
spiritual calling, must be regarded as mere refinements of sel- 
fishness and self-assertion. We may thus wander into Unita- 
rian license on the one hand and into Romish supererogation 
on the other ; but the cross of Christ, as immediately revealed 
and adapted to the need of every soul by the Holy Spirit, is 
the one universal and undeceitful rule of duty for fallen man, 
and the simple means of that union with God and with one 
another, whereby we may realize in all our actions the effi- 
ciency and harmony of true freedom. A true sympathy with 



40 THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

our fellow-men will doubtless lead us to seek every refinement 
of their mental and physical condition, and every enlargement 
of their opportunities for action, which their constitutional 
sensibilities may fit them for. Surely, the world affords no 
nobler object of pursuit ! But is there no danger of our stoop- 
ing in bondage to "the beggarly elements" even in such a 
work as this? As subjects of the spiritual and perfect dis- 
pensation of the Gospel, are we not bound to teach and ex- 
emplify the entire subordination of the resources of nature to 
those of grace, through all the diversities of inherited and 
acquired character and condition? Let us then beware of 
allowing our zeal to overrule our knowledge, and by placing 
sentiment before experience or philanthropy before religion, 
to confirm our inherited bondage, seeing that " there remain- 
eth no more sacrifice for sin," to the victims of the second 
death. 



THE LAW OF THE ROAD. 



"Be of one mind."— i Cor. i. id; 2 Cor. xiii. 11., Etc. 

HEAVEN is the reward of faithful labor. It is the rest 
from labor, and the completion of labor, so far as labor 
involves struggle and strife ; although it may be called the 
very beginning of action, so far as action is animated by that 
divine harmony of pure strength and perfect fitness, through 
which alone activity becomes entirely eflectual and fruitful. 
In either case the knowledge of this divine harmony implies 
the knowledge of God, which is life eternal ; and the increase 
of it w4:iich God, through Christ, and by the Spirit, works in 
the souls of his earnest seekers and submissive children, is the 
true promotion of his glory. The salvation of their own souls, 
and the glory of their Creator, are thus practically one object 
in the aspirations of Christians. 

The Eternal being the only ground and foundation of the 
Temporal, the unseen world of course supplies the principles 
through which alone the agencies and circumstances of out- 
ward life can be reconciled with one another, or appreciated 
and applied in the simplicity which the unity of truth re- 
quires. This is obviously what some writers who are called 
transcendental mean, when they teach that the supernatural 
is more important and more real, while no less present, than 
the natural. Through the inherited infirmity which the pride 
of acquired learning and power cannot ignore, we are natur- 
ally more prone to the investigation of the superficial than of 
4* 41 



42 THE LAW OF THE ROAD. 

the profound, and have to arrive at our knowledge of force 
only through our experience of form. We are born as it were 
upon the surface of things, the first birth being that of the 
flesh, and not that of the spirit. We are naturally fragmentary 
and impotent, although seemingly independent, individuals ; 
but we are called to become sympathizing members of a 
dividual fellowship, in which the will is free because it is 
one and comprehensive, while the actions are dependent be- 
cause they are manifold and comprehended. The natural, 
or individual and divided, is our appointed road to the super- 
natural, or dividual and united. The Christian pilgrimage is 
that by which we must travel from the state of nature to the 
state of grace, if we ever become true Christians. 

Labor is of three kinds or degrees. There is the labor of 
the heart or of the soul, the labor of the head or of the mind, 
and the labor of the hands and auxiliary muscles and mem- 
bers. The diversities of human labor, like all other healthy 
diversities, have indeed their common principle of unity, and 
that principle is here the action of the human will. Involun- 
tary or unconscious habit is not labor, any more than are 
the changes of the so-called inanimate elements of nature, 
which represent no other life than the will of their omnipres- 
ent Creator. The three kinds of labor may therefore be said 
to be manifested, so far as they can be manifested, the 
first in motives or dispositions ; the second, in original 
thoughts ; and the third, in voluntary actions, or adopted 
habits. 

In dealing with our fellow men we are constantly called 
upon to pass judgment upon their performances, as our only 
alternative from passing judgment upon themselves. Their 
dispositions and intentions are a part of themselves ; their ex- 
pressions and actions are the fruits which they impart for our 
probation and possible benefit, whether they are so designed 
by them or not. These, therefore, it is our duty to attend to 
and to deal with, according to our own views of their value 
and applicability. As external facts, they are the natural 



THE LAW OF THE ROAD. 43 

media of communion through which all who recognize the 
permanent principles of the internal life, may test the de- 
grees of their relationship in those ties of intellect, which may 
be said to be intermediate to the strictly external and the 
strictly internal regions of experience. As it is those only 
who have laid hold of permanent principles, who can truly 
think originally or for themselves, original thoughts must 
imply honest hearts ; and the extent to which such can agree 
in the estimation of external events, is the measure of their 
ability to sympathize and co-operate in the work of the 
world. An inability to agree in thought in regard to the 
facts of our joint experience, evidently implies either a want 
of the singleness of purpose which an earnest belief in the 
unity of principles supplies, or a latent and constitutional 
diversity in mental prepossession or the habits of thought. 
The one of these difficulties must be, and the other may be, 
an insuperable barrier to our uniting in labor as lovers of 
truth. 

Since, however, union or fellowship is the noblest object 
of labor with which this world supplies us, and may indeed 
be said to be the very experience which connects the life of 
earth with that of heaven, it becomes and ever remains our 
duty to do all that we can to surmount whatever barriers we 
may find in the way of its increasing realization. And as 
true union is that only which proceeds from the fellowship 
of spirit, this is the standard by which all subordinate forms 
of fellowship are to be estimated. As similarity of action is 
not desirable save as it proceeds from and implies similarity 
of opinion, so neither is similarity of opinion, save as it im- 
plies similarity of feeling. As has, however, already been 
observed, similarity of opinion is a measure or test of the de- 
gree of fellowship which honest hearts can maintain in ac- 
tion : and since, in the exercise of the charity which "believes 
all things," we are bound to presume that our fellows, in 
whatever depth of darkness and depravity they may have 
been sunk by external influences or by their own previous 



44 ' THE LAW OF THE ROAD, 

transgressions, are at least for the present honest in their pur- 
suit of good, similarity of opinion may be regarded as the 
single goal to which our efforts at fellowship should be prac- 
tically directed. The manifestation of opinions in actions is 
indefinitely modified and masked by varying circumstances ; 
and our feelings are naturally inappreciable to others save as 
they are embodied and communicated in opinions and actions. 
Fellowship, therefore, in the purely external, being compara- 
tively unattainable, and in the purely internal comparatively 
inappreciable, the intermediate or intellectual region of expe- 
rience remains, as that in which we must in the first place 
strive to unite, if we aim at a fellowship which may be at 
once feasible and fruitful. Our law of intercourse is thus in- 
dicated both by its own propriety, and by the exclusion of 
others which might be rashly adopted as more practicable or 
more refined. 

The Present may be styled our road to the Future, as the 
External is to the Internal. The two journeys may be re- 
garded as one, and the same rules may be recognized as the 
guides of our pilgrimage in each. Human fellowship must 
be regarded in each as the strongest support and the no- 
blest object, after the pure communion with the divine Author 
of our being. The surest instrumental agency, as we have 
now seen, by which we can promote this fellowship, is the 
labor of intellect. It becomes us, in the next place, to seek 
to perform that labor with the independence which proceeds 
from true earnestness, and with the prudence which proceeds 
from true humility. 

Assuming, as we must, the unity of truth, we may infer 
that the only effectual labor of intellect is that which tends to 
realize that unity, by an ever growing appreciation of its pro- 
found importance. If we thus realize it for ourselves, and 
subsequently find that it has been realized by others, we so 
discover a ground of union between ourselves and them. But 
if we begin by assuming a ground of union with any to whom 
we may capriciously wish to be attached, and seek accord- 



THE LAW OF THE ROAD. 45 

ingly to conform our opinions to what we may conceive theirs 
to be, we must evidently be living at best upon a borrowed 
faith, which will lack strength if it do not also lack sound- 
ness, and which will be sure to desert us, if it do not destroy 
us, in the inevitable time of trial. In the one case we pursue 
the path of wisdom ; in the other, that of folly. Their marks 
are easily distinguishable when thus brought into contrast. It 
behooves every one to bear in mind the simple difference be- 
tween them, and to be upon the watch to confirm the good, 
and to reform the evil, in his own character and career. As 
each one is busied with thinking upon his own duties, he will 
not be in danger of attributing imaginary thoughts to other 
people, either to their annoyance or for his own delusion. 
The truth is happily so inexhaustible in its grandeur and 
loveliness, that its earnest votaries will value even the delights 
of human fellowship, but as brooks by the way, while pressing 
forward to the perfect union in the Father's house of " many 
mansions," which is built upon the Rock, Immanuel. 



ATONEMENT. 



" With his stripes we are healed." — IsA. liii. 5 ; i Pet. ii. 24. 

The word once spoken may not be recalled: 

Time past may not return : 
How shall the forfeit be forestalled 

To justice stern ? 

I wring my hands and gnash my teeth in vain : 

In view of my mistake, 
I seem to feel the mark of Cain, 

And fear and quake. 

And still I struggle to restore the debt ; 

Alas ! new debts arise, 
From new-found duties pressing yet 

On me unwise. 

Dread taskmaster ! by thee, O Law ! I die, 

Except some miracle 
My lack of service shall supply. 

And speed me well. 

Were once the mischief of the past removed, 

My life, from tumult free, 
Might journey in the path approved, 

Not hopelessly. 

Then should I know a God of strength and will 

To meet my present need. 
And ready with conducting skill 

My course to speed. 

Spring, Holy Fount of healing love ! for such 

Our fathers say Thou art ; 
And cleanse with thy sufficient touch 
My leprous heart ! 
46 



THE LAND OF PROMISE. 



" Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither shall thy land be any 
more termed Desolate : but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land 
Beulah : for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married." — 
IsA. Ixii. 4. 

THE last seven chapters of the Book of the Evangelical 
Prophet vividly portray the doom of the self-deluded 
voluptuary, as contrasted with the reward of the self-denying 
believer in the work and merits of the only Saviour. As the 
denial of self ensures a devotion to the demands of duty, by 
simply suppressing the disposition to idle indulgence which 
is natural to man, Christ crucified is found to be ever " the 
power of God and the wisdom of God" to all who lift their 
affections from " the things which perish with the using," 
" desiring to be clothed upon with their house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." The cross of Christ, being 
proposed to us as an universal rule of life, evidently renders 
all compromise impossible between the pursuit of pleasure 
and that of duty, leaving, indeed, the impure pleasure which 
is sought and found for its own sake, as a heritage of corrup- 
tion to those who despise its discipline, but opening ever new 
sources of happiness to those who value pleasure merely as 
the handmaid of duty. The antagonism between pleasure 
and duty is one which has originated in sin, and which sub- 
sists only in the '^ evil heart of unbelief." In the experience 
of the regenerate Christian, they are reconciled " both unto 
God in one body by the Cross," which alone is able as sah- 

47 



48 THE LAND OF PROMISE. 

milled to, to keep the love of the reward in its proper subor- 
dination to the love of the work, and to induce a neglect of 
earthly enjoyment save as it may be the attendant of faithful 
performance. Duty being followed as the only object and 
the only law of life, so far as an}^ object and law are needed 
other than the love of God and of our fellow-men, pleasure 
will be found at our side as a faithful and useful ally in the 
work of righteousness, and beauty will not lag far behind. 
The principle of enmity being thus slain in ourselves, the 
occasion of enmity with one another will also be removed, 
and all feelings of division and distance will be superseded 
by those of fellowship and attraction, as we steadily advance 
to the goal of heavenly union in the Divine Centre and Source 
of all good. 

The charity or love which never fails, may be said to be 
represented in human character by the three subordinate and 
co-ordinate traits, of humility, simplicity, and activity; which, 
again, are respectively manifested in outward life by the fruits 
of concord, intelligence, and progress. As neither of these 
traits can be the genuine offspring of the faith which works 
by love, except as it is accompanied by the others, so the 
fruits which severally indicate them can actually exist only 
in combination. Either the concord, or the intelligence, or 
the progress, seeming to exist alone, must be a mere seeming 
which is superficial, unsound, and futile. Existing together, 
they certify a happy approach to that only worthy object of 
all labor and aspiration, the realization of the Divine Pres- 
ence by a participation in the divine perfections. ''Lord, 
Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations," was 
the devout acknowledgment of the Jewish leader and law- 
giver, uttered, doubtless, in the intense appreciation of indi- 
vidual insignificance, of social importance, and of filial effi- 
ciency for every good word and work, which the view of 
himself, of his fellows, and of the world, in the light of divine 
revelation, could not fail to supply. In accordance with this 
are the words of Elihu, " There is a spirit in man, and the in- 



THE LAND OF PROMISE. 49 

splration of the Almighty giveth them understanding ;" and 
those of King Solomon, " God hath made man upright, but 
they have sought out many inventions." The occasion of all 
our delusions may be said to lie in the peculiarities which 
attach to our individual life, in consequence of our ancestral 
fall. Only wdien we feel, and think, and act, as man, and 
not as men or individuals, do we observe or regain the integ- 
rity of our original nature. Despising that spiritual simpli- 
city of truth and good which can in our fallen estate be real- 
ized only b}^ the power of faith, and thinking to know good 
exclusively or pre-eminently for ourselves, we reject the path 
of true discovery for that of delusive invention. Then indeed 
are we " taken captive by the Devil at his will," relying upon 
show as if it were substance, and confirming ourselves by the 
example of others who may be like-minded with us, instead 
of accepting the offered guidance of the only infallible Spirit. 
Then do we lay ourselves open to the apostolic admonition, 
" I fear lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through 
his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the sim- 
plicity that is in Christ." But as we individually wait for 
"the inspiration of the Almighty," to make us truly acquaint- 
ed with the spirit of man, and with all its wants, and with 
its true relations to the Spirit of God, it becomes possible for 
the empty arrogance, the blinding confusion, and the specious 
slothfulness of spirit, which betray the continued presence of 
the old Serpent in the world, to be replaced by the stable 
dignity, the enlightening simplicity, and the genuine activity 
of Divine Love. 

The life of true work is one with the life of true faith. 
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, after writing that 
" Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence 
of things not seen," has added, "Without faith it is impossi- 
ble to please God : for he that cometh to God must believe 
that He is, -and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently 
seek Him." This soul-satisfying conviction is doubtless both 
the preliminary stimulus, and the growing consequence, as 

5 D 



50 THE LAND OF PROMISE. 

well as the sure test, of an earnest, working faith. The apos- 
tle Paul testified to his "son in the faith," that "godliness, 
with contentment, is great gain, having the promise of the 
life which now is, and of that which is to come." And the 
same eminent authority elsewhere appeals to "that holy 
Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance 
until the redemption of the purchased possession." As this 
Spirit of promise can only be apprehended by faith, the ex- 
ercise of faith consisting indeed in nothing more or less than 
the effectual apprehension of its holy help, it follows that a 
true faith implies a measurable realization through it of the 
Heaventy Life. Faith and its consequence being thus prac- 
tically inseparable, we may understand how the inspired 
penman, without deviating from the ordinary and necessary 
license of language, happened to write of faith as being it- 
self " the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of 
things not seen." His object was doubtless not so much accu- 
rately to define a doctrine, in advance of the then prevailing 
development of thought, as efficiently to commend a practice ; 
and his words were clearly neither too few, nor too many, nor 
illy chosen, for the occasion. The important doctrine which 
the militant Church is now perhaps preparing to maintain with 
increasing precision, is, that true working faith, the " obedi- 
ence of faith" as distinguished from the " assurance of faith," 
is simply that right exercise of the human will, or power of 
spiritual choice, which is necessary for the reception of the 
freely oflTered salvation. It is the voluntary submission to the 
drawings of that Spirit of the Father of spirits, which is at 
once the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of promise. The 
salvation which comes by faith is indeed the gift of God in 
Christ our only Atonement and Mediator ; but the work of 
faith must in an individual sense, begin in ourselves, although 
that beginning may consist but in the willing realization of 
our own impotence. Only as it thus begins can it be hoped 
to result in that experimental communion with the Father 
which leads to the realization of his heavenly promises, and 



THE LAND OF PROMISE. 5 1 

the fulfillment of his perfect will, through the birth of that 
love, and the nourishment of that hope, which are the guide 
and the support of the regenerated soul. 

Many indeed are the occasional promises which are re- 
corded for the encouragement of those who seek an heavenly 
country. The riches which the Almighty Creator can and 
will bestow upon his obedient children, are doubtless as 
boundless as are his mercies to the repentant sinner ; and lest 
the sinner should want a motive to repent, he is even re- 
peatedly reminded that the very revenues of the wicked shall 
become the heritage of the just. But a written assurance is 
of merely secondary value to those who have realized the 
spiritual substance through an immediate acquaintance with 
the Word inwardly revealed. May we so enter by the door 
of faith into the synagogue of our own hearts, as ever to hear 
the voice of Him whose wont it is to be there in the midst, 
while He proclaims, " This da}^ is this Scripture fulfilled in 
your ears !" Luke iv. 21. 



THE PLACE OF FICTION, 



" No man seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment." — Mark ii. 21. 

IT is worthy of remark that the contrast between Fact and 
Fiction is less definite than that between Truth and False- 
hood. Fact, being distinctively the embodiment of Truth or 
knowledge, and Fiction, that of Falsehood or ignorance, they 
are of course practically distinguishable from each other, only 
so far as we may succeed in tracing actions or impressions 
to the determining principles of character. Fiction, there- 
fore, as a most frequent if not universal element of human 
performance or experience, becomes a matter of immediate 
practical interest to all earnest thinkers, in its diverse rela- 
tions to Truth or essential good, and to Falsehood, or essential 
evil. 

So far as human knowledge is conjectural, all thought, it 
is evident, must partake of the nature of fiction. So long as 
human systems of doctrine, even though progressive in their 
tendency, shall be fragmentary in themselves, they must 
themselves be obviously fictions as compared with the un- 
seen but undoubted perfect system to which they tend. We 
can conceive that our rudimentary thoughts and systems of 
thought might be faultless as well as progressive ; and then we 
might infer that our own starting-point was the merely nega- 
tive condition of ignorance. It is the circumstance that we 
can accept no revelations of God or of external nature as a 
whole, that is, without the consciousness of subjective imper- 
fections, or deficiencies of perception, which must be either 
62 



THE PLACE OF FICTION. 53 

left void in our thought, or bridged over by hypothesis, which 
betrays the ravages of sin in our intellectual constitution, and 
corroborates the outward traditional revelation that our start- 
ing-point is the darkness of positive unbelief. Thus, in sub- 
stance, does every earnest soul, in the light of the Spirit 
wdiich ''helpeth our infirmities," demonstrate to itself the 
necessity of the faith or heart-belief, of which it is testified 
that ''the just shall live"* by it, and also that the system 
and substance of divine truth, or the "righteousness of God," 
is " revealed from faith to faith,"* that is, progressively. The 
element of fiction, and the trace of falsehood, though un- 
consciouslv inhering in every private system of faith, until 
faith is itself lost in sight, meanwhile steadily decreases so 
far as the soldier of faith is himself concerned, though 
ever of course gaining fresh entrance into the conquests 
which he bequeaths to his still struggling companions and 
successors. 

From the very constitution of human nature, therefore, 
fiction is an inseparable element of social life. Individuals 
may have systems of faith without actually putting faith in 
their systems. They may escape delusion as their faith may 
be the leader rather than the follower of their system. But 
as corporations are said to have no souls, so society in general 
has no conscience. The social standard is but a sort of 
average of individual standards, and social progress, of indi- 
vidual progress. Every one therefore who mingles in human 
society must encounter Fiction, either as victor or as victim. 
His destiny takes the direction of his faith. If this shall be 
but " to himself before God," he will with the best of reason 
" be fully persuaded in his own mind," and will tend to rise 
above conventional fiction, even while using it for conven- 
tional purposes. If on the other hand any one shall surren- 
der his faith to a clique, a system or a vocabulary, he is sure 
to " condemn himself in that thing which he alloweth." The 
infinite capacity commits itself to a finite aim. "The man 
* Rom. i. 17. 
5* 



54 THE PLACE OF FICTION. 

falls down"* to an unworthy object, and as he persists, the 
loss must be indeed " past retrieving." The all-significant 
if not all-important province of language, being itself wholly 
a growth of fiction, naturally furnishes the most abundant 
illustrations of the course of character in either direction. 
*' By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words 
thou shalt be condemned," said the Incarnate Word,! and 
the testimony of the President of the Apostles may be simi- 
larly construed, J " If any man oflend not in word, the same 
is a perfect man." 

As Sir James Mackintosh has profoundly observed, there 
is a special talent of expression to every order of thought. 
" Those," said he, " who content themselves with the com- 
mon speculations of their age, generally possess the talent of 
expressing them, which must have been pretty widely dif- 
fused before the speculations became common." Even by 
comparatively superficial thinkers, if but truly circumspect 
livers, the universal allegory of language may doubtless be 
safely and profitably, though mechanically or semi-uncon- 
sciously applied, since, as has been often suggested, truth, 
like corn, has to be consumed and lived upon, and must, to 
some extent be sacrificed, so to speak, in the process, — the 
license of custom serving as a foil to the otherwise dangerous 
two-edged sword, on the theoretical side. But a nobler 
application, a deeper work of faith, which is comparable to 
the planting of the seed-corn, is that in which the same cele- 
brated thinker proceeds to show that the previous application 
is found to be fictitious : — " But there are times when there is 
a general tendency toward something higher, and when no 
man has quite reached the objects, still less the subsequent 
and auxiliary powers of expression. In these intervals be- 
tween one mode of thinking and another, literature seems to 

* " Little were the change of station, loss of life or crown ; 
But the wreck were past retrieving, if the man fell down." 

Lowell, Mahmood. 
t Matt. xii. 37. % Jam. iii. 2. 



THE PLACE OF FICTION. 55 

decline, while mind is really progressive, because no one has 
acquired the talent of the new manner of thinking." 

Fictitious narrative, or avowed romance, can of course 
only have a legitimate sphere and function, so far as pro- 
fessedly veracious history or biography may fail to reflect 
the essential elements of actual life in their natural fullness, 
and just relations of proportion and perspective. Beyond the 
limits of this want, it must evidently at best be but a second- 
ary and distorted reflection of nature, adapted only to the 
imaginary demands of those inferior and sectarian orders of 
character and intellect, to which sincerity is repulsive, and 
truth terrible. 



ROMANCE. 



" The dogs eat of the crumbs." — Matt. xv. 27. 

Our common life is creeping prose : 

We heap our ant-hills high, 
Exultant that our puny toes 

Should so sublimely fly. 

For how can common life ascend 

Above the things of earth, 
Or on the baseless dreams depend 

Which poets bring to birth ? 

Upon what common ground, think you, 

Must men converse or band ? 
Except what lies beneath their view, 

What can they understand ? 

This nether world alone is ours : 

Weak children of the clay. 
What boots it to inflate our powers. 

To reach the orb of day? 

Yet at our daylight's frequent close, 

See duty's stars grow bright. 
The members of the mind repose. 

And faith extend its flight. 

Then dreams of beauty find a place : 

The sternest heart succumbs. 
And for a season gains the grace 

To feed on heavenly crumbs. 

Oh, tell me of some larger life. 

E'en now on earth begun, 
Where truth and beauty drop their strife. 

And rise and rule as one ! 



56 



THE DRIFT OF SYNTAX. 



*' Day unto day uttereth speech." — Ps. xix. 2. 

THE iceberg is the child of the snow-flake. Its gradual 
growth, its formidable progress, and its sudden dissolu- 
tion, as now observed and understood, alike illustrate the 
definite action of gentle, but irresistible and all-pervading 
influences, and clearly indicate that all that is yet unaccount- 
able in meteorology and cosmology may be attributed to the 
vastness of the field yet to be explored, rather than to any 
essential obscurity of the determining principles. 

The field of Language, no less than that of physical re- 
search, abounds in interesting monuments of the gradual and 
silent operation of almost inappreciable influences. Though 
the world of mind, which here comes into view, is indisput- 
ably darker than that of matter, yet for this element of diffi- 
culty the explorer has at least the compensating encourage- 
ment, that inasmuch as he is only dealing with the relics of 
past thought, he is only attempting to retrace a progress 
which has been proved possible under circumstances of ob- 
servation less favorable than his own. 

The elements of language may be broadly divided into the 
impersonal and the personal. As it is the office of human 
speech merely to express human knowledge and commu- 
nicable experience, of course it can suggest the Deity only 
secondarily, or so far as He may be at once symbolized out- 
wardly in his creation, and known inwardly in our experi 
ence. There can therefore obviously be no immediately 

57 



58 THE DRIFT OF STNTAX. 

divine element in language, except such as it may share with 
other phenomena of more purely natural origin. Things 
and people, Nature and Man, as the immediate subjects of all 
speech, are the material of all suggestions, and the basis of all 
inferences, which can by it be conveyed from mind to mind. 

It is obvious that the personal element of language must 
distinctively consist in the expression or attribution of action 
and feeling. The expression or attribution of mere being, on 
the other hand, is more closely limited, — and with increasing 
closeness by the advance of general science, — to things, and 
to human character in its universal or impersonal aspect. 
As personal views or aims avowedly prevail, therefore, verbs 
of volition and consciousness will be the prominent members 
of a sentence ; and, as impersonal interests are discovered, 
and pursued or professed, nouns substantive, and the so-called 
substantive verb, " to be." 

Since all intelligent communication presupposes a basis of 
mutual intelligence, there are always some words in a sen- 
tence which will be more apt to be anticipated by the hearer 
as being suggested by the others, than those others would be 
if left to the latter part or end of the sentence. Whether, 
therefore, the personal or the impersonal standard of interest 
and ground of understanding shall prevail between speaker 
and hearer, the hearer's power of attention will be best econo- 
mized, and his stock of interest most surely maintained or in- 
creased, by leaving the more matter-of-course, though con- 
ventionally, «or even intrinsically, more important words, to 
the last. As the fixing of the point implies the content of 
the intellectual pyramid,* the care will be first to satisfy the 

* By the use, indeed, of the substantive verb in combination with partici- 
ples or infinitives in place of the personal moods, every sentence may be con- 
verted into a sort of equation in which the logical copula, "is," corresponds 
to the mathematical sign of equality, =. But where an agent is concerned, 
the subject must be either of greater or less acknowledged consequence than 
the logical predicate, according as the aim of the narrative or argument is the 
glory of the individual, or the illustration of abstract truth. In this case, 
therefore, instead of a suspended balance, the sentence may be compared to 



THE DRIFT OF SYNTAX, 59 

thirst for information with the formal little, and afterward the 
sense of grammatical completeness with the formal much. 
The prevailing structure of the sentence, in a particular com- 
munity or at a particular era, thus becomes an index of the 
prevailing creed of life, as implied in the pre-supposed basis 
of common intelligence. Where, as among the old Romans, 
virtue is practically, as well as etymologically, identified with 
mere manliness, the tendency to hero-worship inevitably 
shows itself in the customary gravitation of the verb to the 
bottom of the sentence. Where good, and the Source of 
good, are sought in things or principles, rather than in peo- 
ple, as to some extent in the less worldly-minded, though more 
ancient Greeks, and more largely and avowedly in the more 
modern professors of Christianity, the human element is less 
developed, or shrinks into comparative insignificance by the 
side of that which more immediately and purely symbolizes 
the Creative, and Sustaining, and "Unspeakable" Word. 

It may be incidentally remarked as being perhaps another 
result of the defective religion of the great military nation, 
that in the development of the verb, it seems to have system- 
atically discarded the use of a simple past tense, which has 
so generally prevailed both among more ancient and more 
modern peoples. The Imperfect Tense of the Latins, like that 
of the Greeks before them, was directly expressive only of 
either continuous or abortive action, and by no means sup- 
plied the place either of the Greek Aorist, or of that which 

a standing pyramid. If glory be the chase, the aspirations and volitions and 
subsequent sentiments of the hero (verbs, active or passive) will be more 
readily anticipated and less eagerly asserted, than the materials (nouns sub- 
stantive) on which they are exercised, and which, though thus subordinate in 
secret appreciation, give point, as we say, to the utterance, by indicating that 
which is then or there novel in the method and results of the life whose high- 
est flight is a homage to circumstances. In the investigation and demonstra- 
tion of truth, again, the mental or physical movements of the agent are in like 
manner seen to be at once matters intrinsically of secondary importance, and 
yet temporarily of more urgent interest, as indicating the method and results 
of the life which is a continual triumph over circumstances. 



6o THE DRIFT OF SYNTAX. 

in our own tongue has rather capriciously inherited the name 
of the Imperfect. The emphatic Perfect was employed by 
them for the most part in the wide range of occasions to which 
the simple past tense, whether it be called Aorist, or Imper- 
fect, or Preterite, is properly fitted. There is a sort of self- 
assertion, or dependence on mere attainment, in their habitual 
mention of the past as something which is perfected, which 
can perhaps only be accounted for as arising from a theoret- 
ical though doubtless ever confusing and often disappointing 
dependence on the permanence of worldly interests and insti- 
tutions. Acknowledging Right only as it was embodied in 
successful Might, they were, as a modern observer remarks 
of a modern people, " impious in their skepticism of a theory" 
which might conflict with their own, but they "would kiss 
the dust before a fact." * Foolishness, indeed, to them would 
have seemed the boast of the warrior-prophet and king of the 
Chosen People, " I have seen an end of all perfection ; but 
Thy commandment is exceeding broad." 

The vagaries of language are necessarily many, and may 
often, in the infancy of the social intellect, rise to the rank 
of temporary institutions. But they can never carry the 
heart-believer beyond the reach of the voice of God in the 
soul and in, the outward creation ; and all of them must at 
last meet and terminate in the universal anthem to which the 
Hebrew lyre was so early and happily attuned : 

"Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps : 
Fire, and hail ; snow, and vapors : stormy wind fulfilling his Word ; 
Mountains, and all hills ; fruitful trees, and all cedars : 
Beasts, and all cattle ; creeping things, and flying fowl : 
Kings of the earth, and all people ; princes, and all judges of the earth : 
Both young men, and maidens ; old men, and children : 
Let them praise the name of the Lord: for his name alone is excellent; 
His glory is above the earth and heavens." 

* Emerson ; English Traits. 



PROPHECY AND INTERPRETATION. 



" The word of God is not bound."— 2 Tim. ii. 9. 

" No prophecy of the Scripture is of its own interpretation." — 2 Pet. i. 20. 

IT is a remarkable testimony of Lord Bacon respecting 
some of the prophecies of the Old Testament, that they 
are '' of the nature of their Author, to whom a thousand 
years are as one day ; and therefore they are not fulfilled 
punctually at once, but have a springing and germinant 
accomplishment through many ages, though the height or 
fullness of them may refer to some one age." The power of 
insight, and that of foresight, will doubtless be twin mysteries 
so long as the objects of truth upon which they may be exer- 
cised shall themselves present any features of apparent incon- 
gruity. As the true seat or present origin of all mystery con- 
sists merely in the clouded nature of our own perceptions, the 
rectification of these is of course all that is necessary to ex- 
hibit to us in the boundless scenes of the inward and outward 
creations an ever prevailing coherency. When the true con- 
nection of body w^th spirit, of necessity with freedom, and 
of time with eternity, shall be intelligently realized, truth will 
doubtless become in our conceptions the unit which it is in 
reality; and insight and foresight will become synonymous 
terms, indicating the sure and ready apprehension, however 
limited it may be in its reach, of a clear and collected 
intelligence. 

This view of the nature of our own ignorance, and of the 
secret identity of tlie unknown with that which we call the 
6 61 



62 PROPHECY AND INTERPRETATION. 

known, may not only reconcile to our apprehension the pos- 
sibility of any alleged degree of intuition or of premonition 
beyond that which we ourselves may for the time enjoy, but 
may secure us from rashly discrediting the genuineness of any 
particular prophetic pretensions on the ground of their being, 
as it has been termed, " self-fulfilling." The dependence of 
the future upon the present being recognized as the basis of 
all prophetical truth, the dependence of a premonition upon 
a genuine intuition cannot be admitted as an evidence of 
cunning contrivance on the part of the seer ; but will actually 
confirm the value of his warnings, however much, by elucidat- 
ing their mode of origination, it may abate the ignorant awe 
which may have attributed to him a degree of sanctity and 
sagacity almost unattainable by mortals. The knowledge of 
the trutli is indeed the great leveler of human distinctions, 
but it may always be welcomed by the lover of his kind as 
'' a leveler upward." Well, indeed, might the great jurist 
of Israel exclaim, "Would God that all the Lord's people 
were prophets !" 

If insight and foresight be two names for one power or 
process, any definite limit of insight must also be a definite 
limit of foresight. The fullness of any inspiration which 
may be embodied in words is thus never inexhaustible, be- 
cause it is always measurable. Prophecy, however, whether 
it be called insight, or whether foresight, is none the less 
valuable on account of this limitation, since it is always avail- 
able as a testimony for the truth to the extent of its original 
design, and at the same time bears witness, by the very prin- 
ciples of its limitation, as these may be in succession ascer- 
tained, to the superior and still more enduring agency and 
efficacy of the spiritual and divine Word which is the one 
living Source of its manifold lively streams. This aspect of 
the subject appears to have been overlooked by the translators 
of the ordinary version of the Bible in their rendering of the 
above-cited text from the Second Epistle of Peter. The apos- 
tle's meaning appears to have been too large for them to re- 



PROPHECY AND INTERPRETATION. 63 

ceive in its original simplicity of expression, and they accord- 
ingly appear, in attempting to transplant the form of his 
utterance from one language into another, to have disturbed 
its symmetry if not to have destroyed its vitality. 

The comparison of genuine Scriptures with each other is 
perhaps the readiest and most convincing mode of ascertain- 
ing the limits of their value. Such comparison seems espe- 
cially necessary by w^ay of tracing discrepancies of utterance 
to crudities of experience and doctrine, precision in thought 
being presumably antecedent to precision in expression, even 
under the guidance of inspiration. A notable instance of 
such discrepancy occurs in the Mosaic narrative of God's 
strivings with the chosen people in the establishment of the 
Levitical Law, as compared with many other passages in the 
sacred writings. We there find the account of what was, in 
the inspired writer's apprehension, a distinct* change of pur- 
pose in the divine counsels, such as is elsewhere, with equal 
distinctness, declared to be an impossibility. The great 
leader, legislator and historian, appears upon that occasion 
to have been hampered in his view of the divine attributes 
and purposes, by the limits of his personal experience as an 
agent in what may be called the merely political changes of 
his day. " What will the Egyptians say ?" is the query which 
naturally occurred to him, as an instrument who was at the 
instant but partially conscious of the magnitude of his own 
mission as it has since been revealed. 

It is doubtless a matter of importance that we should en- 
deavor to attain clear ideas of the extent of our own capacities 
and opportunities for the knowledge of the truth. There is 
doubtless some fact of experience which may be justly styled 
the limitation of prophecy, since man is evidently not om- 
niscient. But we have scriptural warrant for believing that 
this limitation is essentially a limitation of the power of utter- 
ance, rather than of the capacity of receiving and of the power 
of retaining. It may indeed be doubted whether the human 
* Numbers, ch. xiv. 



64 PROPHECY AND INTERPRETATION, 

mind is capable of conceiving any question, which it is not, 
in the light graciously and steadfastly vouchsafed from heaven, 
capable of eventually answering. The powxr of conception 
appears to be, in the ideal world, as well as in that which we 
more exclusively style the actual, the same with the power 
of production. The scriptural text which may perhaps most 
readily occur to the reader as seemingly opposed to this view, 
may be regarded as rather contributing evidence in support 
of it. "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; 
but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to 
our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this 
law." The recipients of a twilight revelation were here 
assured of the permanency of their hold upon the knowledge 
then granted, in spite of the incompetency of its embodying 
language ; while the suggestion of the riches of truth reserved 
for a more perfect administration of the Divine Power, was 
so vague as to claim little more than a negative value. Even 
then, however, the spiritual travailer for truth could doubt- 
less anticipate the substance of the testimony of the royal 
Psalmist, '' Thou satisfiest the desire of every living thing," 
and could thus attain within the restricted compass of his 
own thoughts, to that completeness and clearness of system 
which is at once the necessary concomitant of an intelligent 
consistency in action, the immediate object of an enlightened 
faith, and the sure ground of an expanding hope. 

May we, who live in the days of increased and increasing 
illumination, not forget the dignity of our calling as intelli- 
gent beings, nor the injunction so explicitly addressed to us, 
that " every man be fully persuaded in his own mind !" So 
only may we hope as "kings and priests" unto the Father, 
to obtain grace "from Him which was, and which is, and 
which is to come," to interpret the words of the Law, and to 
know the Word of the Gospel, to the glory of God, and to 
our own assured peace. — Rev. i. 6, 7, 8. 



UNIVERSAL SCRIPTURE. 



" In God we boast all the day long." — Ps. xliv. 8. 

In words and in acts 

Of human consent, 
In physical facts, 

In vigor unpent, 

The universe flows, 

A process immense 
Of earnest repose 

And gathered expense ; 

While guiding its course, 

Revealed or unknown, 
Its mystical Source, 

Sits God on his throne. 

His heavenly rule 

The rainbow implies, — 
The chase of the fool, 

The boast of the wise. 

Thus perfectly shown, 

Though late understood. 
Be joyfully known 

The Giver of Good ! 

For ever He sends 

His edicts abroad. 
In all that offends 

And all we applaud. 

His servants review 

The hne upon line, 
Intent to construe 
The writing divine. 
6« E 66 



THE MORTALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 



" Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away," — i Cor. xiii. 8. 

THEOLOGIANS have evidently missed their mark in 
making a bugbear of the doctrine of Foreknowledge. 
Knowledge, being finite in its nature and particular in its ap- 
plication, is partial and contingent and therefore self-limited 
both in its value and duration. Wisdom is infinite and gen- 
eral, universal and absolute, self-developing and eternal. 
These cannot be empty or idle epithets, except to those to 
whom spiritual existence is emptiness, because of their making 
the material world their all in all. Knowledge is indeed the 
means of wisdom, as it is also the means of folly. As the 
staple material of every degree of intelligent intercourse, it 
maybe called communicable wisdom, or the "wisdom of this 
world and of the princes of this world which cometh to 
naught." Knowledge, even when occurring in the form of 
the grandest results of the most finished culture, is essentially 
external, and therefore transitory. Wisdom is internal, and 
therefore eternal. This distinction doubtless furnishes the 
basis upon which we must discriminate the manifestations of 
mind from those of soul. How startling, how terrible, in- 
deed, is it to the man of culture who does not constantly thus 
discriminate, to have to meet the announcement that know- 
ledge must pass away ! And yet how is the mortal despair 
which may lurk in the reflection that 

" Thought lies deeper than all speech," 
66 



THE MORTALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 67 

extinguished in the " hope full of immortality " as he finds 
ability to add, 

" Feeling, deeper than all thought !" 

The brain is the seat of thought : the soul is the subject of 
experience and of independent vitality. The phenomena of 
consciousness and volition are most intricate, as metaphysi- 
cians might long ago, could they have anticipated the modern 
triumphs of mechanical invention, have a friori argued that 
they must be. That they may be counterfeited to an indefi- 
nite extent in the animal creation by the mere force of habit 
or instinct, especially in the more educable species, and pre- 
eminently in the human animal, cannot long seem to be im- 
possible to one who considers that the contrivances of me- 
chanics are human, while those of physiology are divine. 
We even profess to think and to act, often, " mechanically." 
Thus it is, that a custom or a notion may seem to be most 
firmly established by the number of its adherents, w4ien it is 
upon the very brink of collapse and oblivion. In the never- 
endino- miracle of conscious individual and social life, ideas 
and institutions are perishable simply because the spiritual 
nature in man is a progressive nature, and because progress 
through a world of intermingled good and evil implies a re- 
linquishment, sooner or later, of every form of experience 
which is tainted with the germs of corruption. When the 
laws of the external life are harmonized with themselves and 
with those of the internal Hfe, either in individuals or in so- 
ciety, progress will indeed no longer imply relinquishment, 
but will be an unwasting development. But until that won- 
drous goal shall be gained, sacrifice must be the condition of 
support or formal death of essential life, even in the realm of 
thought and knowledge. God speed thee, then, honest re- 
former, of whatever profession, or of no profession, if thy 
modesty allow thee none ! Go on "turning the world upside 
down," so far as in thee lies ! The truly righteous man, who 



68 THE MORTALITT OF KNOWLEDGE. 

is " fully persuaded in his own mind," will not fear that his 
foundation shall be destroyed by thee. Foreknowledge, if it 
be anything, is but a form of knowledge to him. He not 
only knows, but he feels, that by the goodness of God, his 
temporal and eternal security is made contingent upon nothing 
but the just submission of his own will. His trust, and his 
glory, are not in institutions or in doctrines, but in God on 
high. 



THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS. 



" He hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we shall see Him, there is 
no beauty that we should desire Him." — Isa. liii. 2. 

*' We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto 
the Greeks foolishness." — i Cor. i. 23. 

" Christ hath once suffered for us, the just for the unjust, that he might 
bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the 
Spirit."— I Pet. iii. 18. 

THE call to perfection as sounded by the Divine Man in 
the Sermon on the Mount, evidently enjoins something 
more than the freedom from actual sin. His w^ords were, 
not, Be perfect as I am perfect, but, "Be ye perfect even as 
your Father which is in heaven is perfect." * This language 
must be accepted as not only condemning all voluntary trans- 
gression, but as commanding an actual progression in the full 
but measurable manifestation of the divine life consequent 
upon obedience. As a man, the limitations of Him who 
" was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,"f 
were doubtless in some way more stringent than those of the 
subsequent generations of the race. Although " God gave 
not the Spirit by measure unto Him," :j: He testified that his 
followers should "' do greater works" than his, because of his 
going " to the Father." § As his own perfection in its posi- 
tive aspect consisted in a progressive development of the 
Divine Life, so must the perfection of his faithful followers 
include an ever progressive triumph over inherited or ac- 
quired infirmities. As such triumph can ensue only upon a 

* Matt. v. 48. t Heb. iv. 15. J John iii. 34. § John xiv. 12. 

69 



70 THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS. 

thorough spiritual conversion, the attainabihty of such con- 
version becomes phiinly a most important doctrine. 

Accordingly we find ourselves exhorted by the early apos- 
tles of Christianity, not so much to imitate the w^orks of the 
Saviour, as to seek the aid of his Spirit in tlie determination 
and ^performance of our own. The fruits of the Spirit are 
carefully commended to our cultivation, and primarily among 
them that of patience or "• long-suflering," as a necessary 
pioneer of Christian experience. Says one, " We glory in 
tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience ; 
and patience, experience ; and experience, hope." * And 
another, " The trying of your faith worketh patience ; but let 
patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and 
entire, wanting nothing."! As we read that it became the 
Father, "for whom are all things, and by whom are all 
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Cap- 
tain of their salvation perfect through sufferings," J so for 
confirmation of our patience we are directed "to Jesus, who 
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despis- 
ing the shame." § Says yet another, "For even hereunto 
were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us 
an example that ye should follow his steps." || 

As the work of spiritual progress can only be manifested 
in a progressive emancipation of human life from that bond- 
age to the corruptible forms of outward experience which is 
the only possible worldly manifestation of spiritual stagna- 
tion, the contest between formality and spirituality may be 
said to be not only the engrossing engagement of the repent- 
ant sinner, but also the incessant labor of the militant Church, 
even within its own limits. It is conceivable, it is indeed in- 
evitably consequent upon the doctrine of perfectibility, that 
spiritual and formal progress may not necessarily involve a 
lifelong conflict with "the world, the flesh and the devil" on 
the part of individuals ; but as a whole, the Church on the 

* Rom. v. 3. t James i. 4. % Heb. ii. 10. 

§ Heb. xii. 2. 11 1 Pet. ii. 21. 



THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS. 7 1 

Earth is doubtless ever a Church Militant, and must expect to 
encounter opposition in its work of " forgetting those things 
which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which 
are before," and so pressing toward the mark for " the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." * " As then he 
that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born 

after the Spirit, even so it is now If I yet preach 

circumcision why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the 
offence of the cross ceased." f Progress, individual or col- 
lective, is manifested in the refinement of the outward forms 
of action and experience ; but the spiritual power of the 
Cross is the only refining and truly vitalizing agency. That 
it is an offensive agenc}^ is indeed implied in its very name ; 
but that it is eventually a harmonizing and progressive 
agency is implied in the doctrine of a Divine Resurrection. 
Successive forms of traditional propriety may and do from 
age to age share the fate of the obsolete observances of the 
Jewish ritual, supplying thus the ground of conflict and the 
occasion of triumph to successive generations of spiritual 
warriors ; and the all-important strife must continue to rage 
and to advance until the prophesied day of consummation, 
of which " no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, 
neither the Son, but the Father knoweth." \ Until that eter- 
nal Sabbath shall dawn upon the Church, it must contain 
struggling members, who will find a labor of suffering, en- 
grafted upon their zeal for the truth by their love for the 
brethren, and therefore seemingly undergone on their behalf, 
to be the constant condition of all their rejoicing. Surely, 
they may be w^ell content to " fill up that which is left be- 
hind of the afflictions of Christ in their flesh for his body's 
sake, which is the Church," § being emboldened by faith in 
the resurrectional power of a spiritual crucifixion, to defy the 
imitative transformations of the subtle Power of Evil, although 
standing "in jeopardy every hour,"|l until the complete re- 

* Phil. iii. 13, 14. t Gal. iv. 29 ; v. 11. % Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxiv. 36. 
§ CoL. i. 24. II I CoR. XV. 30. 



72 THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS. 

covery from their natural depravity shall turn all their sorrow 
into joy. 

"Whoso is wise and will observe these things, even he 
shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord." * By thus 
securing an interest in the "one offering" whereby the con- 
tinual High Priest " hath perfected for ever all them that are 
sanctified," will the Christian warrior of whatever degree 
ever be able to conclude his remonstrances with vacillating 
brethren, with the confession and admonition of the catholic 
apostle in his epistle to the "foolish Galatians :" — " But God 
forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto 
the world. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth 
anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as 
many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them and 
mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From henceforth let no 
man trouble me ; for I bear in my body the marks of the 
Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
be with your spirit. Amen." 

* Ps. cvii. 43. 



VANITY OF VANITIES. 



" If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." — i Cor. 
XV. 19. 

The force of attraction is doubly displayed : 

Between subject and object it acts, — 
The clasp of a fitness transcendently made 

By the GoD, or the will, which attracts. 

All knowledge implies but a fitness, as shown 

By attraction, when conscious as love, 
While subject and object in concert are known, 

Through an impulse derived from above. 

One world we discover within us, as one 

Correspondent is opened without : 
By various progress their circle is run, 

As we move in assurance or doubt. 

Meanwhile, whether faithful or doubting, we find, 

By the inward the outward controlled, 
And matter submissively carried by mind. 

As by solvents, the solids they hold. 

In running the round, if that inner world share 

With predominance due our esteem. 
Its certain completion in joy or despair 

Will no meaningless mystery seem. 

Not matters without us, nor motives within, 

Can be heralds of God, to the thought 
Whose course is involved in the darkness and din 

Which prevail when mere objects are sought. 

And joyless indeed were the Christian's career, 

Could the bawbles which dazzle the sense 
Of idler and worldling, supplant the pure cheer 

Which enlivens his labor intense. 
7 . V'? - 



MERIT. 



" I have seen an end of all perfection, but thy commandment is exceeding 
broad." — Ps. cxix. 96. 

IT has been remarked by a celebrated author, as a charac- 
teristic of the unsophisticated vigor of the earnestly in- 
quiring mind, that "things take the signature of thought."* 
The longer we live, if we live deliberately and independently, 
the more fully do we realize the fact that external nature is 
but a mirror upon which are shadowed in demonstrable out- 
lines of beauty or deformity, the principles of our interior ex- 
perience. To assert this, even in anticipation of the realiza- 
tion, would be but to extend to our human nature, the 
observation which we all find to be true in subordinate 
spheres of knowledge, that force is ever interior to form. 
In both cases is the force, or life, concealed by the form, or 
body, and yet revealed by it. Indeed it may be said to be 
concealed by it in order that it may be revealed by it, as the 
ordained channel for the communication of intelligence. It 
is thus that the material world may be said to confess itself 
the servant of the spiritual, ever closely following and legibly 
registering its progress in the harmony and powder of truth. 

Never, indeed, without conflict, is the supremacy of the 
ideal over the actual experimentally maintained. The spir- 
itual domain of emotions and motives must witness a triumph 
within itself over the intrusive suggestions of sloth and dis- 
cord, before it can manifest itself in efficient and harmonious 
action. Only by perseverance in the uncompromising war- 

* COLERmCE. 

T4 



MERIT. 75 

fare which the Son of God, and Saviour of men, descended 
from Heaven to institute, and lives in Heaven to direct, are the 
eternal freshness and power of truth to be realized in inw^ard 
and outward fruits of happiness and peace and glory. The 
life of the faithful Christian, and it alone, is endowed with 
the subtle graces and genuine activity of perennial youth. 

Youth itself, however, may be said to be a form, as well as 
a force. As a phenomenon of time and space, it bears pre- 
cedence among the controlling conditions of every individual 
existence. Through the neglect of its spiritual potentialities 
it may become a decaying and corrupt form ; but as it is ani- 
mated by the love of truth and duty, it is found to be at once 
firmly conservative and irresistibly progressive. By the ex- 
ercise of the Divine charity which believes, hopes, and en- 
dures all things, while it may seemingly ignore the existence 
of essential evil, it grasps and wields the only weapons which 
can oppose and overcome it. Steadfastly ceasing to do evil 
in its own preconceived forms of work, it as steadfastly learns 
to do well in the life of faith ; and its path is " as a shining 
light, shining more and more unto the perfect day.'* The 
perfection of yesterday may become the imperfection of to- 
day ; but the "exceeding broad commandment" remains to 
conduct it onward to the perfect manhood of ••' the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 

It is perhaps one of the least imperfect or improper, and 
therefore one of the most persistent and most useful illusions 
of the youthful pilgrim, to place more or less confidence in 
the fallible authority of his fellow-man. The prescription of 
tradition, and the prestige of service, seem to him to invest 
merely occasional rules and merely mortal examples, with 
the sanction of universal and enduring applicability. By 
them he is willing to be guided, and to them he would fain 
appeal " that his deeds may be made manifest that they are 
wrought in God." For only as the education of nature is en- 
tirely subordinated to that of grace, is the promised sonship 
attained, whose happiness it is to distinguish the one imme- 



^6 MERIT. 

diate, undeceitful and Divine Light, from all transmitted or 
reflected radiance. But so far as the standard and the sanc- 
tion of the Christian neophyte may be thus in the keeping of 
his fellow-man, he cannot "be fully persuaded in his own 
mind," and his store of rejoicing must be accordingly not in 
himself, but "in another." The depth and fullness of the 
promise, " when my father and my mother forsake me, then 
the Lord will take me up," must remain to be realized by 
him. One by one his mortal authorities must fail to fulfil his 
purest expectations, as they more or less gradually expose 
their own natural limitations ; while still others will be at 
hand to attract the allegiance of his imperfect faith, until the 
revelation of righteousness in the gospel "from faith to faith" 
shall finally emancipate him from all dependence upon mor- 
tal priesthoods. Then will he first fully realize with regard 
to his fellows, that which he may perhaps long before have 
discovered with regard to himself, that whatever merit there 
may be in human works, there is none in the human worker ; 
but in Him who shall have wrought all their works in them. 

ISA. XXVi. 13. 



THE SUBORDINATION OF LAW. 



"Every man in his own order." — i Cor. xv. 23. 

IT being the object of Law to define duty rather than privi- 
lege, — the right of w^ork rather than the right of enjoy- 
ment, — they who seek through it for privilege or enjoyment 
are apt to find themselves grievously disappointed. It is only 
secondarily, or by being primarily the surety of work, that Law 
is ever the surety of enjoyment. The law of labor can never- 
theless become the law of happiness to those who order their 
desires in accordance with the terse and trite proverb, " Busi- 
ness first, and pleasure afterward." "Blessed," exclaims an 
indefatigable though variously appreciated teacher,* " is the 
man who has found his work !" The intelligent and faithful 
workman is indeed a freeman, and a sovereign in his sphere. 
As there are, however, different spheres of labor, so there 
are difl^erent spheres of Law ; the superior in either case, by 
virtue of the unity and consistency of all truth, comprehend- 
ing the inferior to the extent in which they maybe associated. 
The law of the subject is thus identical, so far as it may reach 
with that of the ruler, and can only gain in efficiency and 
interest by approximating to it. The suggestions of a true 
superior to a faithful inferior can therefore never be intrusive 
or annoying ; but being a part of the communion of love, they 
will, like every other form of genuine charity, be elevating 
and enlarging to both " him who gives and him who takes." 
The same power of love, which can alone, as the law of 
labor, perfectly " cast out fear" in ourselves, may also, as the 
law of happiness, exclude hostility in others, and thus become 

* Thomas Carlyle. 

7* 77 



^8 THE SUBORDINATION OF LAW. 

both privately and publicly the law of prosperity and of peace. 
Subordination is thus simply one of the elements of harmony. 
Step by step must the naturally dependent and short-sighted 
worker rise to the discovery that " he that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God, and God in him," realizing therein only the 
fulfilment of the divine injunction, "Whosoever will be chief 
among you, let him be your servant." 



AUTHORITY. 



' In that day shall there be one Lord, and his name One." — Zech. xiv. 9. 

Thou wouldst not lose thy dignity ! — Well said, 
If so thou meanest humbly to confess 

Thy own subjection to the mighty Head, 

Whose will each member must in acts express. 

But art thou yet indeed his member ? Hast 
Thou naught of joy in any life, except 

In that clear stream with which his Oneness vast 
From kindred veins each selfish taint hath swept ? 

Authority, where decently maintained. 
Must flow in living order. Stagnate not 

By resting in the posture thou hast gained, 
Dreaming thyself creation's central spot. 

Forsake thyself: reject the bonds of sense : 
O'er time and space, seek with thy spirit's eye 

An Essence vaster than their vague immense, 
And find within thyself the Eternal Why ! 

Within thee, though not of thee, God shall then 
Extend his throne, and share with thee his rule 

O'er all his works, and o'er unholy men, 

To curb the headstrong, and reprove the fool. 

Subordination then will be thy aim, 

First for thyself, and then for those around. 

That each thereby may press his humble claim 
For strength and joy, where both are fully found. 

All nature, then, true to the primal law 

Of order, shall show forth its Sovereign's will, 

While gently tempering his o'erpowering awe 
Through his vicegerents widely working still. 



79 



ABSTRACTIONS versus DELUSIONS. 



" For the time will come when they will not endure somid doctrine," — 
2 Tim. iv. 3, 4. 

THERE is what may be called a divine music in a well- 
ordered life. The genuine intelligence and ample com- 
prehension which belong to the divine nature in the renewed 
man, express themselves necessarily and yet freely, to those 
who have " ears to hear," in the language of an unbroken 
harmony. All things being "done decently and in order" 
no true interest is neglected, and none is pursued in an im- 
proper time, place, or mode. Such a life will be likely to 
appear monotonous if not unmeaning to observers whose 
habits of thought are dislocated from its happy integrity by 
an undue devotion to any of the subordinate interests which 
enter into the composition of its one leading interest, because 
to such the main objects of their life will seem to be recog- 
nized only to be set at naught. They will see that everything 
which is necessary for the existence of their idols is preserved, 
while the idols themselves will appear to be overlooked from 
the mere fact of their being in turn subordinated to the preser- 
vation of the still larger interest or interests, which ever lie be- 
yond the reach of an imperfect faith. Truth, which is the great- 
est reality, is also the greatest abstraction ; and there is always 
a point at which the pursuit of it for its own sake, must appear 
but as weariness and foolishness to all whose vision is either 
lost in the mists of a groveling sensuality, or diverted from 
the Central Luminary by the gilded clouds of a more refined 
and aspiring selfishness. While this is their condition, how 
8J 



ABSTRACTIONS VS. DELUSIONS. 8 1 

can they do otherwise than "despise the voice of the charmer, 
charming never so wisely?" 

Every definable rule of life may ba called an abstraction, 
and must become a delusive one as it is made to usurp the 
place of the indefinable and only universal rule of the Divine 
Spirit of life and truth. This only can enable us in all cases 
to observe the Divine precept, "Judge not according to the 
appearance, but judge righteous judgment." Every motive 
which may seem to ourselves to begin or end in any definite 
object of created good, is but "vanity" and must land us in 
"vexation of spirit." The only remunerative service is the 
service of the bountiful Creator, and this is at all times incom- 
patible with a primary pursuit of worldly attainment. "Ye 
cannot serve God and Mammon." Money, which is the 
most universally recognized representative of worldly good, 
thus becomes the most delusive of abstractions, as it is men- 
tally abstracted or detached from its place in the divine order 
of truth, and elevated from the rank of a means to that of an 
end. Here, at least, experience is found to agree with theory. 
The late Stephen Girard, whose success in accumulating 
money was of course no proof that he was at heart a w^or- 
shiper of Mammon, however his mind may have lacked the 
development which a timely discipline of nobler rules might 
have ensured, avowed at the very zenith of his seeming pros- 
perity, that his main object in life was to work hard enough 
in the day-time to be able to sleep soundly at night. Accord- 
ing as his success was a substantial or an empty one, how 
must he have smiled, either in pity or in scorn, upon the mul- 
titudes whom he beheld around him eagerly enlisted in the 
pursuit of his glittering abstraction ! 

Position, popularity, reputation, praise, and immortality, 
are names by which "the world" recognizes different degrees 
of its other favorite abstraction. These also, so far as they are 
realities, are but variously imposing and fleeting forms of the 
Power which consists solely in the knowledge and love of the 
truth. As they are attained in the spirit of insubordination to 

F 



82 ABSTRACTIONS VS. DELUSIONS. 

the truth, they too must prove to be but delusive phantoms, 
and the unhappy aspirant will ever be constrained mentally 
to repeat the melancholy demand, " Is this all?" 

"The concrete" is in some sense the opposite of "the 
abstract." By the one epithet we mean an embodied or com- 
municable good or evil ; and by the other, a disembodied or 
incommunicable. The rule of self-denying love, which is the 
law of liberty, is also that of all true realization and commu- 
nication. By it only, as revealed through faith in the Divine 
Son by the Holy Spirit can we realize the strength which 
is to be found in union with one another, and in communion 
with the Father of spirits. The onl}' way to avoid the delu- 
sions and disappointments of the scattering voices of " Lo ! 
here," and " Lo ! there," is thus to seek the kingdom which 
is only to be found within us. This pursuit will involve a 
willing abstraction from all dependence upon sensual and 
artificial aids, but it will be a triumphant abstraction, whose 
victory will be qualified by no mixture of unhappy disap- 
pointment. "The concrete" may indeed be said to mean 
the whole of life, but the promise of the blessed Saviour re- 
mains in force, "He that loses his life for my sake and the 
gospel's shall find it." 

Only as we begin our pilgrim course with this holy ab- 
straction, can we hope to avoid by the way those which are 
unholy and delusive, and to close our struggles with the ex- 
ulting exclamation, " the half has not been told." Only as 
we thus bring all our crowns to the foot of the cross of 
Christ the Saviour, can we hope to join the throng of those 
who even now come " from the uttermost parts of the earth " 
to behold the glory of Him who is "greater than Solomon I" 



HIDDEN LIFE. 



" The grave cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate Thee : they that 
go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. 

" The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day : the father 
to the son shall make known thy truth."— Isa. xxxviii. i8, 19. 

FAITH in doctrine,* hope for truth,| and love to God, J 
may be styled the successive stages of a religious life. 
Each of these stages, after the first, being essentially a con- 
firmation and extension rather than an abandonment of that 
which has preceded it, the aspiration of such a life is for 
growth or development, rather than for any externally pre- 
scribed attainment, which might be at the best but a rambling 
appearance of gain. Owing to the variety of present circum- 
stances and previous opportunities in different individuals, 
the manifestations of these different stages maybe often alike, 
or indistinguishable from each other by any prescribed rule, 
so that no definite standard of spiritual vitality can be safely 
assumed. The "fruits of the Spirit" must indeed be sooner 
or later recognizable, either in their increase or in their 
decrease, to the spiritually minded observer, whose eye is 
single and whose "whole body" is accordingly "full of 
light ;" so that such an one may be divinely enabled to see 
the direction in which the feet of his fellow-man are moving: 

* "Faith Cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of GoD." — RoM. 
X. 17. 

t " We are saved by hope : but hope that is seen is not hope." — Rom. 
viii. 24. 

J " God is love : and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God 
in him." — i John iv. 16. 

83 



84 HIDDEN LIFE. 

yet even such an one is for the most part happily exempted 
from the necessity of deciding how nearly the steps of a com- 
panion have reached, on the one hand, to the goal of perfect 
devotion, or on the other to the limit of the Divine toleration 
and mercy, and of distinguishing the precise period at which 
his face may begin to turn from the course which he has been 
pursuing. We may even be "' living in pleasures," and there 
fore " dead while we live," and the dreadful reality may, in 
very mercy, be indiscernible to those who love and care for 
us, that our religion is an empty form, our faith that of the 
devils who " believe and tremble," and our whole life a state 
of spiritual bondage, under whatever disguise of seeming 
freedom and happiness. 

The grave is the hopeless home of corruption to all who do 
not spiritually descend into its inevitable gulf by faith in Him 
who overcame death. So far as any have experienced the 
power and submitted to the dominion of sin, they must be made 
" dead with Christ," before they can also live with Him. 
The outward interment and decay of our corruptible bodies 
is not more fitly symbolical of the spiritual condition of those 
who reject the terms of heavenly grace, than the temporary 
repose of the mortal part of the holy Captain of salvation in 
its rock-hewn sepulchre may symbolize the temporary or ap- 
parent withdrawal from wonted scenes of action, of lives 
which are undergoing the all-important conversion from the 
state of nature to the state of grace. The strength of these 
may be as completely veiled from the view of their fellow- 
mortals, as is the weakness of their benighted contemporaries ; 
and they may appear by comparison as ghastly spectres, walk- 
ing the Earth but to destroy the pleasant pictures of God's 
creation. Alread}^, nevertheless, such are practical preachers 
of the "baptism of repentance," and heralds, to those who 
have hearts to understand, of the solemn decree, that the 
"fashion of this world" shall pass away. As they keep the 
word of Divine patience, the promised day of redemption 
from the power of temptation will follow. Their Saviour 



HIDDEN LIFE, Z<, 

will " come quickly," and the crown which no man shall 
take away will be their reward. Only such can ever be en- 
titled and prepared to respond to the animating summons, 
"Arise, shine: for thy light is come, and the glory of the 
Lord is risen upon thee. For behold, the darkness shall 
cover the earth, and gross darkness the people : but the Lord 
shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee." * 
For of them that sleep in the dust of the earth, some shall 
awake " to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlast- 
ing contempt." '' But they that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to right- 
eousness as the stars for ever and ever." \ 

* Is A. ]x. 1,2. t Dan. xii. 2, 3. 

8 



A PARAPHRASE. 



Ps. cxxx. 

Out of the depths we cry to Thee ; 
Hear Thou our voice attentively ! 
O Lord ! with all our dreams of merit, 
What wealth can willful works inherit? 

Forgiveness is the boon we seek, 
Before the blessing of the meek. 
Let mercy's gates expand before us ; 
Then as we run, do Thou restore us. 

Our startling fear, our steadfast hope. 
What scheming with thy Word can cope ? 
For Thee we wait and thy adorning, 
Like watchers wishing for the morning. 

More eagerly than these we pray, 
Spread in our hearts thine endless day. 
As, through the scenes of thy creation, 
Each soul pursues its own salvation. 

Thy called and chosen each shall be, 
Who struggles in sincerity. 
To conquer every inbred giant 
Which mocks thy rule with deeds defiant. 

Like Israel, then, may we prevail, 
As one man, o'er our common ail ; 
And, shielded by thy Son s exemption. 
Attain thy plenteous redemption ! 

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, 
While thus our earthly race we run : 
And o'er each good Thou still suppliest, 
Sing we thy glory in the highest ! 
4th Mo., 1863. 



86 



A POSSIBLE STEP FORWARD. 



" Where is the promise of his coming ?" — 2 Pet. iii. 3. 

[Note. — It may be due to the reader to state that this piece was designed 
as a substantial reproduction of the first few pages of that on Conversation 
AND Education, which shortly follows. It was written wholly at the sug- 
gestion of a valued counselor, who thought the matter might be thrown into 
a more popular form, for a philanthropic periodical just then, as it turned 
out, on the eve of discontinuance.] 

" '^ I ^HE desire of a man is his kindness," said the wise king. 
JL Necessary as it is to preach the gospel of good works 
by way of shutting out bad works in our age and country of 
physical energy and material abundance, we cannot yet afford 
to lose sight of the principle that it is the spirit of the doer 
which mainly qualifies the deed. The great circle of practi- 
cal truth may be equally broken, and the work of practical 
religion equally interrupted, by a misanthropic listlessness, 
and by the merely formal or imitative activity which may 
equally coexist with an actual sluggishness of spirit. 

But while all earnest workers must be at times painfully 
conscious of this tendency to superficiality and consequent 
futility in our best life, we seem to have been as yet much at 
a loss for the means of expressing our condition and of so 
being prepared intelligently and unitedly to shun its dangers. 
It is naturally difficult for any of us, — and the difficulty may 
be only confirmed by association with those of like antecedents 
and surroundings with ourselves, — to idealize that the most 
seemingly definite knowledge is modified by the extent and 

87 



88 A POSSIBLE STEP FORWARD. 

form of our individual capacity, or that every Item of truth 
has universal relations by virtue of which it is capable of ex- 
panding with our expanding capacities. Knowledge is a 
progressive, because a relative, thing. While Truth is im- 
mortal, " Knowledge," we are divinely assured, "shall vanish 
away." Knowledge consists in the conscious adaptation of 
our present selves or senses to our present circumstances, or 
in other words, in the relation of a "subjective" or internal 
element to an " objective" or external element, and is neces- 
sarily as transient or mutable as either of the elements upon 
which it depends. In these qualities of all merely human 
knowledge, we may trace the original necessity of the myste- 
rious bond of individual faith (Rom. xiv. 22) as the only hope 
of consistency, and the reason of the subsequent supremacy 
of the rule of individual experience. Rom. xiv. 5. 

The distinction between subjective and objective truth be- 
ing a primary condition of all human consciousness,, is there- 
fore also a primary consideration in the just estimation of 
human motives. These terms "objective" and "subjective" 
have been too long the exclusive property of metaphysicians, 
and, as might have been anticipated, the metaphysicians have 
to some extent abused their monopoly. They have too much 
failed to teach the transitory value of thought as an object of 
endowment, and the still more transitory value of language, 
as a still more superficial object. The so-called " Philosophy 
of Common Sense" of Reid and Hamilton, now widely pre- 
vailing, may be styled a systematic repudiation of the objec- 
tivity of Thought. Maintaining that external things are 
themselves the real objects of original Perception, and thus 
implying that we see everything that we see at all exactly as 
it is. It so far removes all inducement to correcting our per- 
ceptions and extending our insight by the processes of com- 
parison and analj^sis. We need not inquire whether it pro- 
fesses to do so, since error is ever inconsistent. By failing 
justly to distinguish between thoughts and things as objects 
alike, though in different degrees or distances, external to the 



A POSSIBLE STEP FORWARD, 89 

thinker, it admits if it does not advocate a repeal of every 
principle of progress. Crescit euiido, '' it grows with going," 
is a law which is especially applicable to the march of mind, 
but no scope is allowed for its operation here. Old forms of 
thought perish by being absorbed and transformed into larger 
and fairer ones, which they could not be, were our perceptions 
originally of things as they truly are. 

There is a constant revolution in the progress of mind, and it 
may be that that revolution and progress cannot be understood 
without a regard to the principle of Polarity. It would seem 
that there are subjective and objective poles and hemispheres 
of experience or knowledge, just as there are the North and 
South poles of the globe we outwardly tread. Scriptural 
testimony is not wanting as to the fact and mode of the con- 
tinual growth of mind. It must clearly be by reason of such 
growth rather than of any selfish or studied reserve, that the 
" wise man" keeping his thought " till afterward" is present- 
ed as having an advantage over "the fool" who "utters all 
his mind ;" and this because his sufficiency is not of himself, 
his supplies being all drawn from a Source which is confess- 
edly incomprehensible to himself. In the more explicit 
though more comprehensive language of the New Testament, 
" the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith ;" 
and is not the philosophy of polarity poetically recognized m 
that of the Psalmist, " Beautiful for situation, the joy of the 
whole earth, is Mount Zion on tlie sides of the North ;" and 
again, " Promotion cometh neither from the East, nor from 
the West, nor from the South" } 

Purity and peace are primary characteristics (James iii. 17) 
of the "Wisdom which is from above." I would say nothing 
to degrade them either as subjects or as objects from their 
scriptural eminence among the Christian graces. I have only 
to urge that they should be pursued as being indeed qualities 
of the Wisdom which is from above, in which case there will 
be no danger of their being detached from other virtues. 
With this view we assuredly need to study the laws of 
8* 



90 A POSSIBLE STEP FORWARD, 

thought in their necessary connection with the laws of action 
as important means of preserving us from superficial activi- 
ties, or so-called hobby-riding. Where the love of display, 
which is so apt to attend the pursuit of any definitely pre- 
scribed effect, to any extent supplants the disinterested guid- 
ance of individual faith, spiritual intelligence must be propor- 
tionally dormant, and religion at best retrograde from the 
freedom of the gospel to the bondage of the law. There 
must sooner or later be a subversion of the true motives of 
tliought and action, the unknown being subordinated to the 
known, or aspiration to attainment ; and the comparatively 
trilling mysteries of the latest witchcraft will so far obscure 
and obstruct the miraculous growth and triumph of Christian 
truth. One of the broadest injunctions of Holy Writ is that 
of him who may be called the analytical apostle, " Let all 
things be done decently and in order ;" and it seems to me 
that one of our next steps forward must be a more general 
recognition of the just subordination of the Objective to the 
Subjective, of the phenomenal to the real, of the past to the 
coming, of the passing to the lasting, which is traceable 
through all degrees of progress in knowledge. Let us re- 
member that all the efforts of skepticism have failed to dis- 
prove that there is a real and lasting Power of Evil, to which 
we may by carelessness in any direction become victims. 



INCIDENTAL EDUCATION. 



" I WILL bring the blind by a way that they knew not." — IsA. xlii. i6. 

EDUCATION, like every other special business or expe- 
rience, may be either direct or indirect. As the influ- 
ence of the teacher may be either designed or undesigned on 
his part, so the progress of the learner may be either con- 
scious or unconscious on his. By indirect or incidental edu- 
cation, I mean the progress which while unconscious on the 
part of the pupil, is not undesigned on that of the tutor. By 
virtue of the fact of his having been before over the ground 
which they are traversing together, the intelligent tutor is able 
in the realm of his own consciousness to be at once before 
and behind his junior companion, while seeming perhaps to 
be only at his side. It is his business to know not only the 
work which is to be done, but also the character and circum- 
stance of the worker, in some respects at least, better than 
they are known to himself, so that speaking as it were from 
behind him, or from the direction in which he is least 
known to himself, he may be able to check every deviation 
with the cry, "this is the way, walk in it." 

I do not mean to claim for the teacher the prerogative of 
priesthood beyond the necessity of his calling ; but it seems 
clear to me that to a certain extent he must, if he teach any- 
thing thoroughly, realize and illustrate the doctrine that faith 
must precede mental and spiritual vision. So far as the 
pupil may need to be supplied through human channels 
with the inspiration which shall impel him to make use of 

91 



92 INCIDENTAL EDUCATION. 

his opportunities, I would say that it is the teacher's business 
intelligibly to point the precept, " Know the Lord." This, I 
conceive he will surely do by a faithful adherence to the rule 
that the development of hidden principles is incidental to the 
teaching of obvious facts. 

The direct teaching of facts or objects is conscious learning 
to the pupil, because it consists in a definite addition to his 
fund of knowledge. The incidental development of princi- 
ples is indirect teaching and unconscious learning, because it 
seems at first to be nothing more than the orderly arrange- 
ment of knowledge. As the learner, however, becomes fiimil- 
iar with this orderly arrangement of knowledge, the princi- 
ples of harmony and unity on which it depends become 
recognized by him as being themselves the most substantial 
of facts. Although at a previous stage of his progress he 
might have spurned their announcement as the preaching of 
mere abstractions or purely subjective notions, he now values 
them as being in his own experience the most permanent 
of realities. Thus he is qualified to act in his turn the part 
of an intelligent truth-teacher to those who may still be in 
bondage to the beggarly elements of a comparatively super- 
ficial life and knowledge. 

The science of language, being a metaphysical science, is 
of course one in which we cannot look for such an early 
appreciation of principles as in the mathematical and more 
obviously physical departments of knowledge. In all alike a 
hint may be taken from the recipe of the facetious cuishzier^ 
"first catch the fish." The "raw material" is of course, in 
all, the basis not only of observation, but of communication. 
To the pupil, at least, the teacher ought always to be wiser 
than his books, — the virtual embodiment of the truth which 
they profess to illustrate. In contemplating language as the 
vehicle, and thought as the material of education, let us re- 
member that while the science of language is practically in- 
separable from the science of thought, it is truly subordinate 
to it ; and let us accordingly be prepared to inculcate, at the 



INCIDENTAL EDUCATION. 93 

very outset, the view that thoughts or ideas do not lose their 
rank as things or objects, merely by being reduced, and as it 
were refined, into a concentrated form of experience, so that 
they can be carried in the memory along with their associ- 
ated words. There may be a transient mysticism in such 
teaching, but even this may be regarded as an incidental 
advantage in a doctrine so fundamentally important. Even 
children cannot too early realize the truth that knowledge in 
the distance is necessarily mystical, nor be too early guarded 
against confounding mysticism with absurdity. Their inter- 
est will be more likely to be stimulated than checked by this 
simple, straightforward policy, not only in the study of lan- 
guage, but in that of every other science which can be made 
the subject of language. By their unsopliisticated instru- 
mentality, let us doubt not, even teachers may be incidentally 
aided in developing the order of wisdom out of our chaos of 
knowledge, so that the world will again be able to accept and 
careful to cherish the now discarded maxim, Scientiarum 
janitrix graniTfiatica^ Grammar is the janitress of the 
sciences. 



KNOWLEDGE. 



"Add to knowledge temperance." — 2 Pet. L 6. 

The knowledge which answers a need, 
Is that which wise learners will love : 

"Where our nature is wanting indeed, 
May its guidance be sought from above ! 

For who of us fathoms his wants ? 

Who sees through the crowd of his cares. 
And, in fairest or gloomiest haunts, 

To meet each in its order prepares ? 

Man's cravings, of hunger and thirst, 
For action, and thought, and repose, 

In their freshness rank each as the first ; 
And of each, by its objects, he knows. 

Such knowledge avails him not long : 
In physical concert it stands. 

And ensures not the nutriment strong 
Which the flight of the spirit demands. 

That nutriment still, as a child, 
Truth's earnest explorer shall find. 

And with knowledge imbibe, unbeguiled 
By the adjuncts of matter or mind. 

So reaching from every height 
The knowledge in feeling begun, 

Will he soon in the verdict unite, 
— There is no new thing under the sun.* 

But gaining by staff and by rod 
The comfort which all things augment. 

He will know of the only true God, 
And of Jesus, the Christ He hath sentt 

* EccLEs. i. 9. t John xvii. 2. 

94 



THE EXPENDITURE OF EXPLANATION. 



" From the fact that they had Reason in abundance, they were somewhat 
chary of reasons. Their thinking, indeed, gives us the solid, nutritious, en- 
riching substance of Thought, .... and especially avoids the thinness and 
juicelessness which are apt to characterize the greatest efforts of the under- 
standing, when understanding is divorced from character." — E. P. Whipple, 
on the Thhikers of the Age of Elizabeth. 

IN the Scriptures of the New Testament, besides the gen- 
eral commendations of the spirit of unsuspecting charity 
on the part of all men toward their fellow-beings, we find 
particular occasions or modes mentioned for its exercise. 
We are distinctly exhorted to give alms of our material and 
intellectual substance as well as of our spiritual sympathy, 
with the view, doubtless, of leading us to realize in ourselves 
the riches of the true spiritual charity, which cannot be main- 
tained and demonstrated without such outward communica- 
tion. He who shall petition us for a reason of " the hope 
that is in us," as well as he who shall come to us for the re- 
lief of his bodily necessities, if we can believe that he is 
making his request with a single view to qualifying himself 
for the discharge of his duties in the Divine sight, is to be 
treated by us as one of "God's poor" whose claims upon 
our attention are incontrovertible and imperative. By the 
neglect of such we lose the opportunity of laying up " treasure 
in Heaven." This is indeed a consideration of primary and 
permanent importance to all who may find themselves to 
be in any degree the stewards of any kind of influence over 
their fellow-men. 



9^ THE EXPENDITURE OF EXPLANATION. 

There is, however, another, and an opposite danger which 
besets all professors of religion, in proportion as they may be 
remiss in the ever urgent duty of scrutinizing their own 
motives and rules of action. The vice of officiousness is sure 
to overtake those in whom slothfuhiess of spirit has induced 
a reliance upon the mere letter of religion. Both the nature 
of their own emotions, and the characteristic circumstances 
of those with whom they have to deal, will be sure to be mis- 
interj^reted by such, and there must be a correspondingly 
ignorant misapplication and practical waste of their labor 
and means. The evils of material thriftlessness wdiich may 
be thus harbored, and even fostered to the magnitude of 
oppressive social burdens, are comparatively well known in 
our day. The danger of fostering a permanent system of 
intellectual pauperism seems to be less generally deprecated, 
as being less superficial, and therefore at once less obviously 
disgraceful to its victims, and more secretly seductive to those 
who may find in it a source of factitious influence. Its mis- 
chievous results must doubtless, however, be more extensive, 
in proportion as its origin and operation are more insidious. 
" Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, is like the 
brutes that perish." 

The application of the divine precept, "Give not that 
which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls 
before swine," must be to some extent obvious to almost all. 
The great difficulty here, as in the observance of every literal 
precept of social duty, is that of remembering upon all occa- 
sions that our own impressions of character may be at fault, 
even where they appear to be most distinct. If, when com- 
pelled by the conduct of our fellow-beings, according to our 
best interpretation of it, to treat them as insensible beings, w^e 
are careful to bear in mind that our interpretation may never- 
theless be deficient, the harshness of our demeanor will not 
be aggravated by the spirit of arrogance. Whether, then, 
the discipline which we have to administer be that of neglect 
or that of attention, its outlay must evidently, by the avoid- 



THE EXPENDITURE OF EXPLANATION. 97 

ance of futile exasperation, be economically adapted to any 
remaining sensibility of the recipient. The sources of health- 
ful feeling, which are the sources of accuracy in thought as 
well as of harmony in action, will thus be as effectually 
reached and stimulated as they can be by human agency. ^ 

As the work of education in both young and old consists 
in the development of the power of independent observation 
and reflection, so the labor of explanation may be said ever to 
resolve itself into one of mere suggestion. Dictation, in mat- 
ters of opinion, ever implies officiousness, or the zeal w^hich 
is *' not according to knowledge," if it do not proceed from 
outright hostility. As the constitution of human society 
approaches the ideal of perfection, the old and serviceable 
trinity, of duty, power and privilege, must still determine the 
degrees of worldly rank; but in the administration of an en- 
lightened charity, the duty, the power and the privilege, must 
be increasingly manifested, as to their merely social bearings, 
in the mere labor of making suggestions. Not the less, how- 
ever, will the continual fruitfulness of all feeling, thought, 
and expression, depend upon the spiritual vigilance which 
shows itself equally in the anticipation of all genuine de- 
mands upon its resources, and in the avoidance of all ofl^i- 
cious wastefulness. "Wisdom is profitable to direct."* 
"Wisdom is justified of her children." f " I^^ % light shall 
we see light." % 

* EccLES. X. 10. t Matt. xi. 19. % Ps. xxxvi. 9. 



CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 



"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching 
and admonishing one another." — Col. iii. i6. 

START not, O gentle reader ! and frown not, O strong- 
minded ! at any seeming incongruity in the terms of 
our title. Even among those to whom we may seem to 
be confounding beginning with ending, opin- 

Unityand scope j^^^^ jj^^^^^. ^^ ^^ ^j^j^l^ jg ^j^^ beginning 

of the subject. -^ _ . . 

and which the ending ; and is it not always 
worthy of commemoration that extremes of experience, save 
as contingent upon extravagancies of conduct, are secretly and 
harmoniously correlated ? Even Etymology indicates that the 
most contrasted objective terms are, or express, but opposite 
termini of practical truth ; and Cosmography assures us that 
the North and South Poles are but a sort of Siamese Twins. 
Let us see if we cannot so identify the world of Education 
with that of Conversation, as to give to both of those terms a 
vitality and an interest which we too often fail to find in the 
imperfect abstractions or the capricious developments which 
they are made to represent. 

First, as to motives. In both we have at 

A view from within. r> . ^ j i '-i ^i t" i 

first to deal with the comparatively super- 
ficial love of man and the dependent desire for human appro- 
bation, rather than with the deeper-seated love of God and 
the more independent aspiration for abstract truth ; while in 
both, with the development or manifestation of independence 
of character, the labor of exhortation and dictation will be 
replaced by that of intelligent demonstration and candid in- 
98 



CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 99 

quiiy, as becomes the possessors of an illumlnalion by which 
all distinctions of personality are thrown into the shade. 
Alike in Science and in Religion personal authority must 
give way to that of argument and of a dividual experience, as 
the neophyte is graduated into the proficient. Abstractly, 
this consideration may seem almost too simple and obvious 
to demand mention ; but in practice it must be acknowledged 
that it is very often lost sight of, owing to the imperfection 
of prevailing theories inducing imperfection of practice. One 
of these imperfections we may now pause to contemplate. 

Thought is superior to language. But it 
becomes practically inferior in the experi- Hidden errors, and 
ence of any who have not learned, or who *^,,|"'^'^'" '^"' ""^ 
do not bear in mind, that they are indeed 
two distinct things. Speech being but the means of our 
meaning, the mere vehicle of the treasures of mind, should 
never be pursued or paraded as an end. When we speak, 
we should speak as those who are trying to be silent; 
and not, even when silent, be silent as those whose powers 
are consumed by the desire to speak. We have too much 
lost the meaning of the sacred proverb, " A fool uttereth 
all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till after- 
ward." It is only by a continual comparison of our words 
with our meaning, that we can assure ourselves that we are 
indeed willing to be still, and possessing our souls in patience, 
while giving vent to our feelings in speech. This consider- 
ation brings to our view a more general principle, of which 
the distinction between thought and speech is but a single 
aspect or illustration ; namely, that primary condition of all 
human consciousness, the distinction between subjective and 
objective truth. These terms have heretofore been too ex- 
clusively the property of the metaphysician. The common 
mind seems now preparing to assert its right to their use, 
and to profit by the observation that Thought relatively to 
Language is Subjective, and Language relatively to Thought, 
Objective. 



lOO CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 

The whole mystery of these terms lies in their relativity. 
Thought, although subjective in its relation to language, is, in 
accordance with a more or less prevailing sentiment among 
investigators in all ages until our own, objective in its relation 
to the Thinker. It is the bane of modern Philosophy, as rep- 
resented by the now dominant school of Reid and Hamil- 
ton, that it fails to recognize the distinct existence of ideas 
as the immediate objects both of reflective Consciousness and 
of direct Perception. The assumed alternative, that external 
things are the immediate objects of Perception, is essentially 
absurd and suicidal, since it plainly involves the assumption 
that the mind, or percipient subject, is in direct contact with 
things as they are, and the Inevitable Inference that we per- 
ceive more than we either understand or remember, and are 
in fact unconsciously omniscient. There are indeed the ab- 
stract ideas, which, as the objects of Memory and the mate- 
rials of Imagination, are distinguishable from the concrete ideas 
of actual Perception, and which by reason of their prior in- 
corporation with the mind may be termed subjective, rela- 
tively to those which are the immediate results of present 
Perception. But this subjectivity is simply identical with 
that of all Thought to all Language, the materials of language 
being, as is now conclusively established, wholly supplied by 
those external Impressions in which all men most unmistaka- 
bly agree, and subsequently subjectively refined pari passu 
(even-paced) with the refinement of Thought. It extends no 
farther, because a healthy Memory and Imagination follow so 
closely in the wake of Vision, that there can be no practical 
discrimination between their objects for individual purposes. 
As a rule, old ideas become continually in themselves more 
objective and obsolete, and seem to retain their subjective 
vitality only by the continued development of mind resulting 
from continued observations upon life and nature, and the re- 
tention of old terms of language in correspondingly extended 
significations. "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
away." The universal subordination of the Objective to the 



CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. lOl 

Subjective, including that of parts to wholes, and indirectly at 
least that of individuals to communities, is the only intelligible 
clue of approach toward the perfection in which all '• that 
which is in part shall be done away." 

The independence of Thought upon Lan- The precedence 
guage being thus, as it were, a constituent part of thought, 
of healthy, human character, must be cherished as a leading 
motive in every worthy labor both of language and of thought, 
and so become a most important bond of union and law of 
relationship between the great and greatly unknown provinces 
of human Conversation and human Education. Let us now 
turn more particularly to an examination of the materials 
which are common to both. 

Here again we are met by the relativity and 
seemingly merely verbal nature of intellectual '^ ^^^^ aspects, 
distinctions, the consideration of first and final causes of ac- 
tions being inseparable from any earnest consideration of 
their nature and value. We cannot, that is, pretend to draw 
a fixed line here between motives and materials ; but by 
making due allowance for the subordination and inherent im- 
becility of language as the mere tool of thought, we shall 
doubtless be enabled to proceed both more intelligently and 
more hopefully than they who cripple their own minds by 
secretly imputing to Thought the limitations of Language. 

For the proper materials both of Conversa- 
tion and of Education we must doubtless look 7'-" ^''''""''^" ^ 

relative one, de- 

without ourselves, as for the motives of both pending on the men- 
we have had to look within ourselves. The !^^ ^^°'*^'°" °^ ^''^ 

inquirer. 

progressive enlargement of the internal realm 
by the progressive subjection of the external, inevitably occa- 
sions a verbal and objective confusion of those realms, where 
self-knov^ledge or wisdom does not keep pace with the know- 
ledge of things ; but the subordination of the objective to the 
subjective is here also the sufficient law of order, as well as 
of illimitable progress. That knowledge of external things 
which may be already at any time attained by any, is definite 
9« 



I02 CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 

and objective as compared with that which is as yet unat- 
tained, and therefore as yet, in its unknown relation to the 
same explorer, purely mystical and subjective. Objects of 
aspiration in some being often objects of attainment in others, 
the utility both of Conversation and of Education thus of 
course lies largely in the fact that our shortest road to the 
unknown truths even of external nature is often through the 
minds of other people. Hence it may well be questioned 
whether the study of Thought in its objective aspects has 
ever received that place of primary importance in the work 
of Education and in the display of Conversation which rightly 
belongs to it. An objective Science of Mind is plainly one 
of the indispensable materials of both, if perfection, or even 
if progress, be possible in either. 

As regards the purely external world the 
ypi e ysex. distinction between subjective and objective 
truth may be defined as identical with that between sub- 
stance and quality. Here we again discover the subtle and 
shifting trait of relativity, — the substance, {quod stat subter., 
as Coleridge writes,) ever retiring from Perception into the 
realm of Imagination, behind the new qualities which it suc- 
cessively gives off as it were to the investigating mind. The 
materials both of Conversation and of Education must clearly 
be for the most part, as regards the external world, deriva- 
tive rather than immediate, or essentially intellectual rather 
than sensational. The laws of Mind are from first to last 
our chief guides and standards for classifying and estimating 
the said materials. Those materials are thus broadly and 
simply divisible into objects of Introspection and objects of 
Perception ; the law of relativity, as already intimated being 
our safeguard from confusion, by allotting to the definite and 
demonstrable educts of thought which most largely influence 
practice, the rank of objective perceptions, while reserving 
that of subjective imaginations for the more vague but hope- 
ful impressions which govern theory. Who can fail to see in 
these contrasting and yet co-operating elements of Mind, — 



CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 103 

the one deriving its inspiration from within and the other 
from widiOLit — a true sexual relationship, for which it may 
be the highest temporal significance of sex corporeal to serve 
as a symbol? It is certain that the law of mental increase is 
often strangely overlooked in the contemplation of its results. 
Said Dr. Johnson in his appreciating biography of the accom- 
plished and indefatigable John Dryden, "A writer who has 
attained his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre. 
Of an opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence 
ceases to be examined. Of an art universally practiced, the 
first teacher is forgotten. Learning once made popular is no 
longer learning ; it has the appearance of something which 
we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to 
rise from the field which it refreshes. To judge rightly of 
an author we must transport ourselves to his time, and ex- 
amine what were the wants of his contemporaries and what 
were his means of supplying them. That which is easy at 
one time was difficult at another."* The light of inspiration 
becomes inappreciable alike behind us and before us, where 
attainment is not constantly combined with and subordinated 
to aspiration. 

The duality of mind at the contemplation 
of which we thus arrive, is perhaps suffi- ^f'^-'f^"''^'"^''*'" 
ciently represented for most occasions by the 
distinction between abstract and concrete ideas ; the abstract 
being ever the leaders in the common progress, and leavino- 
to the concrete the function of expression. The first Rule of 
Arithmetic, for instance, is Addition, (not Numeration, which, 
as its etymology indicates, is more justly to be regarded as a 
synonym for the whole science) which deals wholly in con- 
crete numbers. When, in the labor of adding or numerating, 
we reach the number Ten, we cannot proceed farther, accord- 
ing to the received system of notation, without introducing the 
Rule of Multiplication, in which, as is well understood, an 

* Similar remarks may be found in Dr. Whewell's Novum Organon Re- 
Hffvatum. Bk. 2, ch. 5, § 4 ; ch. 6, § 3 ; Bk. 3, ch. 4, § 4. 



I04 CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 

abstract number is always necessary as '^ Multiplier." 
Everywhere the subjective faculty of Introspection or Imag- 
ination must reinforce the objective faculty of Perception or 
outward Observation, or Science must stagnate, Conversation 
become purposeless and vapid, and Education futile. 

Incentives to as- Although the pursuit of objects or economy 
piration. of materials will doubtless ever be the more 

successful when subordinated to the culture of motives, by as 
much as the known appearance falls short of the unknown 
reality, yet the contemplation of prospective privileges and dis- 
tant glories is an important aid to aspiration, especially when 
our imperfect vision may be assisted by the descriptions and 
suggestions of more experienced and far-sighted explorers of 
truth. To a want of faith in our divinely bestowed, — or at 
least, reverently and thankfully be it spoken, to our divinely 
purchased and practically possible, — capacity, ever increas- 
ingly to comprehend the secrets of the universe without us 
and within us, w^e may attribute that general superficiality of 
the social instinct which constrains mankind to court misery 
in crowds, while the riches of nature rot in her ample and 
luxuriant wildernesses. Ignorance makes us miserable, and 
misery, while loving company, naturally measures that chief 
blessing rather by the quantity than by the quality, seeking to 
satisfy in the attainable extent and diversity, its cravings for 
the too unattainable intensity and geniality. Hence, as has 
been well observed, while older countries are " groaning 
under the necessity of contributing to the support of an ex- 
cessive population," the progress of settlement and civilization 
" amidst virgin lands, forests and waters, is of an almost geo- 
logical slowness."* Let us not conclude the consideration 
of our world-embracing theme without adverting to the anti- 
cipations of that eminent patriarch of Science, vSir John 
Herschel, of the results we may hope to realize when the 
individual discipline of mind and the general freedom of com- 

*" Primeval Forests of the Amazons," N. Moitthly Mag. vol. 128; Lit- 
TELL's Living Age, vol. 78. 



CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION, 105 

munion shall make Conversation truly profitable and Educa- 
tion truly familiar. 

" There is something in the contemplation of general laws 
which powerfully persuades us to merge individual feeling, 
and to commit ourselves unreservedly to their disposal ; while 
the observation of the calm, energetic regularity of nature, 
the immense scale of her operations, and the certainty with 
which her ends are attained" (/. ^., the perception of estab- 
lished order, as the wary writer might perhaps have expressed 
himself had he not written before the dangers of Pantheism 
were so distinctly manifested as now) " tends irresistibly to 
tranquilize and reassure the mind and render it less suscepti- 
ble to repining, selfish and turbulent emotions. And this it 
does, not by debasing our nature into weak compliances and 
abject submission to circumstances, but by filling us, as from 
an inward spring, with a sense of nobleness and power which 
enables us to rise superior to them by showing us our strength 
and innate" (potential) "dignity, and by calling upon us for 
the exercise of those powers and faculties by which we are 
susceptible of the comprehension of so much greatness, and 
which form, as it were, a link between ourselves and the best 
and noblest benefactors of our species, with whom we hold 
communion in thoughts, and participate in discoveries which 
have raised them above the level of their fellow-mortals, and 
brought them nearer to their Creator." — Discourse on the 
Study of Natural Ph ilosofhy^ i S3 1 . 

" That Astronomers should congregate to talk of stars and 
planets; Chemists, of atoms ; Geologists, of strata, is natural 
enough. But what is there of equal mutual interest, eqtmlly 
connected with and equally pervading all they are engaged 
upon, which causes their hearts to burn within them for mu- 
tual communication and unbosoming? Surely, were each of 
us to give utterance to all he feels, we would hear the Chem- 
ist, the Astronomer, the Physiologist, the Electrician, the Bot- 
anist, the Geologist, all with one accord, and each in the lan- 
guage of his own science, declaring not only the wonderful 



I06 CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 

works of God disclosed by it, but the delight which their dis- 
closure affords him, and the privilege he feels it to be to have 
aided in it. This is indeed a magnificent induction, a consil- 
ience* there is no refuting. It leads us to look onward 
through the long vista of time, with chastened but confident 
assurance that Science has still other and nobler work to do 
than any she has yet attempted ; work which, before she is 
prepared to attempt, the minds of men must be prepared to 
receive the attempt — prepared, I mean, by an entire convic- 
tion of the wisdom of her views, the purity of her objects, and 
the faithfulness of her disciples." — Address to the British 
Association for the Advancemeizt of Science .^ i845' 

Equally hopeful are the utterances of less famous voices of 
our Western world. Onef of these may perhaps here suflSce. 

" The highest Science must eventually exhibit a unity 
which shall correspond with that of Reality. Indications are 
not entirely wanting of an approaching re-union between the 
two great branches of Investigation — those which concern 
respectively the Material and the Spiritual domains of nature. 
Our present arbitrary division necessitates a one-sided devel- 
opment of the scientific faculties of the mind. Physical and 
Metaphysical study being each vitally connected with the 
ivhole of Science, it is only by the simultaneous pursuit of 

doth^ that the inquirer can fit himself for either 

The recognition which is to come of the omnipotence of Love 
and Thought on the one hand, and of the undeveloped capa- 
bilities of the lowest human being on the other, will be ac- 
companied I think, whether as cause or as effect, by a new 

* " The Consilience of Inductions takes place when an induction obtained 
from one class of facts coincides with an induction obtained from another 
different class. . . . The Consilience of our inductions gives rise to a con- 
stant convergence of our Theory towards Simplicity and Unity. . . . 
That rules springing from remote and unconnected quarters should leap 
to the same point, can only arise from that being the point where truth re- 
sides." — Whewell, Nov. Org. Ren., B. 2, ch. 5. 

fThe author's ranch lamented friend and kinsman, the late Philip Phy- 
siCK Randolph — 1860. 



CONVERSATION AND EDUCATION. 107 

era of Science, Philosophy, Philanthropy and Religion. In 
their present condition, Science denies the existence of a spir- 
itual world ; Philosophy merely affirms the existence of that 
world ; Philanthropy is without a scientific basis for her effort, 
and Faith is blind to her own power. In the future which 
we anticipate, the Man of Science will recognize the conti- 
nent of permanent Fact and invariable Law which is the fiiir- 
est portion of his domain ; the Philosopher will pass beyond 
the mere recognition of that region, and carry into its explo- 
ration the patience and humility which his compeer has dis- 
played in a lower field ; the Philanthropist will commence 
his labor for Man in the study of the Science of Man ; and 
the Believer will gather the full import of the good tidings 
which are his all in all." 

Courteous and patient reader ! let the depth Deprecatory and 
of this borrowed introspection, and the large- iiortatory. 
ness of this borrowed aspiration, account for the discursive 
and partial manner in which only we have been able to deal 
with so large a subject, and avail to palliate any occasional 
irregularity in the flow of expression where the continuity of 
meaning may upon examination be found unbroken. Let us 
be content with bearing all timely witness, and lending all 
possible aid, to the progressive transmutation of our human 
and too discordant Polytechny into a divine and perfectly har- 
monious Monotechny ; and let us part in the faith that all the 
truths of Science, Conversation and Education are among the 
"all things" of which the zealous but practical Apostle 
writes as "pertaining to life and godliness," and so qualify 
all that has been here said either at first or at second hand 
respecting them, by the confession that if indeed ours, they 
can only be so, as the same inspired penman further writes, 
(when rightly read) "of his divine power which is given unto 
us through the knowledge of Him that hath called us by glory 
and virtue." — 2 Pet. i, 3. 
1868. 



AN ASPIRATION. 



" Let us go on to perfection." — Heb. vi. i. 

Goal of devotion, and Spring of affection ! 

Quiet our terror, and quicken our hope : — 
Rise like a sun for our light and direction : — 

Banish the darkness wherein we yet grope ! 

Palpable darkness still hovers around us, 

Braving the brightness of thy blessed strength : 

Come in thy fullness before it confound us, 
Shine on thy chosen, and save us, at length ! 

Voices behind us, and pitfalls before us, 

Hide in the clouds which dispute thy design. 

Break their besetments, and richly restore us, 
Ere their contagion our faith undermine. 

Where is our standard if Thou shalt forsake us ? 

How shall we rally without a device ? 
What can devices of men but unmake us, 

Ordered themselves as by falling of dice ? 

Chance-born, if ever chance lives in thy system, 
Diverse and fleeting as hues of the morn, 

How can they lure their observers to wisdom, 
Past the brief twilight they rose to adorn ? 

Not as strange gods shall thy sons climb to glory, 
Parted in empire, or hostile in aim : 

One in their nature, and one in their story. 
One Love shall bind them, an infinite same. 

Rise for the seed of thy holy election ! 

Scatter the desperate spirits of ill ! 
God of the just ! for thy name is Perfection, 

Gather thine own to repose in thy will ! 
108 






.»-.■:■'■> '^ 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pn 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxid^ 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservationTechnoloi 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESER 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Crarrberry Township, PA 16066 
(724^779-2111 







«^lf^ 






m 



;?;'i- 



mm 






T>^: ^^^ 



